Control of information in working memory: Encoding and removal of distractors in the complex-span paradigm

Oberauer, Klaus; Lewandowsky, Stephan

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2016.08.007

Cited by 40 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…For example, it might be used in further studies to directly examine how the processes that are assumed to counteract decay and interference relate to each other. Whereas decay-based forgetting is assumed to be counteracted by refreshing, interference is assumed to be counteracted by removing the representations that are causing interference with the to-beremembered information (e.g., Ecker et al, 2014aEcker et al, , 2014bOberauer & Lewandowsky, 2016;. Even though these processes were proposed within opposing theoretical frameworks, their existence is not necessarily mutually exclusive.…”

Section: The Last-presented Benefit As An Independent Direct Index Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional refreshing of information in working memory: Increased immediate accessibility of just-refreshed representations

Vergauwe

Langerock

2017

Journal of Memory and Language

132

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Section: The Last-presented Benefit As An Independent Direct Index Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional refreshing of information in working memory: Increased immediate accessibility of just-refreshed representations

Vergauwe

Langerock

2017

Journal of Memory and Language

132

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“…However, there is debate surrounding the underlying cognitive processes responsible for achieving interference control Fawcett & Taylor, 2008, 2010Festini & Reuter-Lorenz, 2017;Hasher, Lustig, & Zacks, 2007;Kane & Engle, 2003). Recently, Ecker and colleagues (Chang, Ecker, & Page, 2017;Oberauer, Lewandowsky, Farrell, Jarrold, & Greaves, 2012;Oberauer & Lewandowsky, 2016) proposed that there is an active, item-wise removal process that facilitates both maintenance and updating of WM. With respect to maintenance, removing irrelevant information serves to minimize interference and effectively increases WM capacity (Oberauer et al, 2012;Oberauer & Lewandowsky, 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Recently, Ecker and colleagues (Chang, Ecker, & Page, 2017;Oberauer, Lewandowsky, Farrell, Jarrold, & Greaves, 2012;Oberauer & Lewandowsky, 2016) proposed that there is an active, item-wise removal process that facilitates both maintenance and updating of WM. With respect to maintenance, removing irrelevant information serves to minimize interference and effectively increases WM capacity (Oberauer et al, 2012;Oberauer & Lewandowsky, 2016). With respect to updating, efficiently removing outdated information facilitates the substitution of information in WM (Chang et al, 2017;Ecker, Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Chee, 2010;.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In the most recent version of this model, removal has been implemented as a Hebbian anti-learning process that unbinds item representations from their context markers (e.g., when remembering a series of digits such as 2-5-3, unbinding the item "2" from its context marker "first position"). In other words, removal has been modelled as a process that undoes the association created between an irrelevant representation (e.g., a distractor item in a complex-span task, or an outdated item in an updating task) and its position marker during encoding, such that the distractor representation is gradually removed from working memory (Oberauer et al, 2012;Oberauer & Lewandowsky, 2016). This implies that representations that are removed from WM are "unbound" but not entirely "deleted" and thus often remain recoverable.…”

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Interference Control in Working Memory

Singh¹,

Ecker²,

Gignac³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Working memory (WM) is a limited-capacity system requiring an interference-control process to avoid being cluttered from irrelevant information. Recently, it has been suggested that this “housekeeping” mechanism can be attributed to an item-wise removal process serving to actively remove irrelevant information from WM. It has been theorized that this active removal process serves to facilitate both WM maintenance in the face of distraction as well as the updating of outdated information. An alternate view, however, is that interference control in WM relies on an inhibitory process that suppresses the activation of distractors against competing, task-relevant representations. This study is the first to assess the extent to which removal and inhibition represent the same cognitive process. One-hundred and thirty-eight undergraduate students from the University of Western Australia (M = 20.42, SD = 3.09) completed a novel removal task battery in addition to an inhibition task battery. Data were analysed using a hybrid path analytic and structural equation model. The modelling found that there was unique variance associated with the removal latent variable, and estimated that only approximately 9 % of the variance in the removal latent variable could be accounted for by the inhibition tasks, providing tentative support that removal should not be considered a process of cognitive inhibition. The findings support previous claims that removal is an independent WM updating process. The findings are also consistent with a class of computational WM models proposing that removal and inhibition operate on different levels.

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“…free time improves WM only when added in between list items, not when added at the end of the list (Oberauer & Lewandowsky, 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

The Effects of Elaboration on Working Memory and Long-term Memory across Age

Bartsch¹,

Oberauer²

2020

Preprint

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Free time to attend to and process information in working memory is key in promoting immediate and delayed retention. One candidate process to cause this benefit is elaboration. We conducted two experiments with young and older adults to investigate whether free time is used for elaboration. Participants remembered lists of nouns, interleaved with short or long free-time intervals, or with filler words connecting all the nouns into a meaningful sentence to assist elaboration. For young adults, assisted elaboration through sentences, and the additional instruction to form a mental image, benefited performance in a working-memory test as much as longer free time, but not more. In contrast, for a delayed test of long-term memory, the benefits of sentence elaboration exceeded those of longer free time. Older adults did not benefit from assisted elaborations in the delayed test, providing further evidence that the long-term memory deficit of older adults arises at least in part from a deficit in elaboration. This elaboration deficit is not driven by a deficit in generating richer representations.

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Control of information in working memory: Encoding and removal of distractors in the complex-span paradigm

Abstract: General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms

Cited by 40 publications

References 61 publications

Attentional refreshing of information in working memory: Increased immediate accessibility of just-refreshed representations

Attentional refreshing of information in working memory: Increased immediate accessibility of just-refreshed representations

Interference Control in Working Memory

The Effects of Elaboration on Working Memory and Long-term Memory across Age

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