Flexibility within working memory and the focus of attention for sequential verbal information does not depend on active maintenance

Sandry, Joshua; Schwark, Jeremy; MacDonald, Jacqueline

doi:10.3758/s13421-014-0422-1

Cited by 22 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…The current results are consistent with the existence of a flexible 1-item focus of attention in WM, with the item represented in the focus of attention having a special status (e.g., Oberauer, 2002;Sandry, Schwark, & MacDonald, 2014). When it comes to the specific nature of this special status, we observe a clearly positive effect on the accessibility of the item in the focus of attention, whereas Johnson et al (2013) observed a negative effect on the Refreshing in WM 29 accessibility of the item in the focus of attention.…”

Section: Heightened-accessibility Of the Just-refreshed Memory Itemsupporting

confidence: 77%

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: Heightened-accessibility Of the Just-refreshed Memory Itemsupporting

confidence: 77%

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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“…In the visual domain, such effects are typically observed even though participants are asked to concurrently articulate irrelevant verbal information during presentation and maintenance (e.g., Atkinson et al, 2018;Hu et al, 2014;2016;Hitch et al, 2018), and are therefore unlikely to critically involve verbal rehearsal. Similarly, Sandry et al (2014) observed that prioritization effects for visually presented verbal material remained intact under a similar form of articulatory suppression. However, it is unclear whether the same applies when to-be-remembered information is aurally encountered, with no corresponding visual component to the task.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…This task disrupts an individual's ability to rehearse (Baddeley, 1986;Camos et al, 2009). Enhanced short-term and long-term memory performance was observed for high value items, suggesting that individuals can indeed direct attention to more valuable verbal information (Sandry et al, 2014;. The presence of these effects under articulatory suppression also indicates that prioritization effects are not reliant on verbal rehearsal.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Can valuable information be prioritized in verbal working memory?

Atkinson

Allen

Baddeley

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Though there is substantial evidence that individuals can prioritize more valuable information in visual working memory, little research has examined this in the verbal domain. Four experiments were conducted to investigate this and the conditions under which effects emerge. In each experiment, participants listened to digit sequences and then attempted to recall them in the correct order. At the start of each block, participants were either told that all items were of equal value, or that an item at a particular serial position was worth more points. Recall was enhanced for these higher value items (Experiment 1a), a finding that was replicated while rejecting an alternative account based on distinctiveness (Experiment 1b). Thus, valuable information can be prioritized in verbal working memory. Two further experiments investigated whether these boosts remained when participants completed a simple concurrent task disrupting verbal rehearsal (Experiment 2), or a complex concurrent task disrupting verbal rehearsal and executive resources (Experiment 3). Under simple concurrent task conditions, prioritization boosts were observed, but with increased costs to the less valuable items. Prioritization effects were also observed under complex concurrent task conditions, although this was accompanied by chance-level performance at most of the less valuable positions. A substantial recency advantage was also observed for the final item in each sequence, across all conditions. Taken together, this indicates that individuals can prioritize valuable information in verbal working memory even when rehearsal and executive resources are disrupted, though they do so by neglecting or abandoning other items in the sequence.

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“…We see refreshing as an increase in the accessibility of a representation after it enters the focus of attention that remains after the focus moves away . If this was not the case, refreshing could only benefit one item at a time, instead of yielding a cumulative benefit.…”

Section: Refreshing As a Cumulative Focusing Benefitmentioning

confidence: 95%

Where to attend next: guiding refreshing of visual, spatial, and verbal representations in working memory

Souza

Vergauwe

Oberauer

2018

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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One of the functions that attention may serve in working memory (WM) is boosting information accessibility, a mechanism known as attentional refreshing. Refreshing is assumed to be a domain-general process operating on visual, spatial, and verbal representations alike. So far, few studies have directly manipulated refreshing of individual WM representations to measure the WM benefits of refreshing. Recently, a guided-refreshing method was developed, which consists of presenting cues during the retention interval of a WM task to instruct people to refresh (i.e., attend to) the cued items. Using a continuous-color reconstruction task, previous studies demonstrated that the error in reporting a color varies linearly with the frequency with which it was refreshed. Here, we extend this approach to assess the WM benefits of refreshing different representation types, from colors to spatial locations and words. Across six experiments, we show that refreshing frequency modulates performance in all stimulus domains in accordance with the tenet that refreshing is a domain-general process in WM. The benefits of refreshing were, however, larger for visual-spatial than verbal materials.

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Flexibility within working memory and the focus of attention for sequential verbal information does not depend on active maintenance

Cited by 22 publications

References 64 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

Can valuable information be prioritized in verbal working memory?

Where to attend next: guiding refreshing of visual, spatial, and verbal representations in working memory

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