Immunity to proactive interference is not a property of the focus of attention in working memory

Abstract

The Focus of Attention (FOA) is the latest incarnation of a limited capacity store in which a small number of items, in this case four, are deemed to be readily accessible and do not need to be retrieved. Thus a corollary of these ideas is that those items in the FOA are always immune to proactive interference. While there is empirical support for instances of immunity to PI in short-term retention tasks that involve memory for four-item lists, there are also many instances in which PI is observed with four-item lists as well as instances where PI and immunity to PI can be shown in the same experiment. In contrast to the FOA assumptions, an alternative cue-based account predicts both the presence of PI and immunity to PI as a function of the relation between the cues available and the particular test. Three experiments contrasted the FOA assumptions and the cue-based approach in a short-term cued recall task in which PI is manipulated by testing whether the presentation of previous, similar items would interfere with immediate recall of three list items. The results indicated that even with very short lists, both PI and immunity to PI could be observed. The PI effects observed in our experiment are at odds with the FOA approach and are more readily explained using the cueing account.

Prioritization within visual working memory reflects a flexible focus of attention

“…When participants prepare for a trial and they expect a reward, reward-related attentional prioritization may delay the transformation of the stimulus into a working memory representation, leaving it within focal attention and leaving it more susceptible to interference. This interpretation aligns well with evidence that suggests the contents of the focus of attention are susceptible to interference (Beaudry, Neath, Surprenant, & Tehan, 2014;Carroll et al, 2010;Ralph et al, 2011). Given the reward precedes the encoding trial in the current research, the prioritized list position in this paradigm may be susceptible to interference effects.…”

Cognition and Speech-In-Noise Recognition: The Role of Proactive Interference

“…This may also explain the difference between the results of the present study and those of studies reporting evidence of phonological PI in pitch-comparison tasks (Ruusuvirta, 2000;Ruusuvirta et al, 2008). Humphreys (1995, 1998) and Ralph et al (2011) report the results of studies using meaningful stimuli (rhyming and nonrhyming monosyllabic words) to investigate PI based on phonological characteristics. However, they investigated immunity to PI rather than build-up and release of PI, as in our case.…”

The role of long-term memory in a test of visual working memory: Proactive facilitation but no proactive interference.

“…When the first list was read aloud and the second list was read silently, memory for the second list was worse in the PI condition than the control condition, and this effect was driven mostly by erroneously recalling the word from the first list that matched the cue (e.g., recalling “dog” instead of “cat”). Later work extended this finding to serial recall of the second list (Ralph et al, 2011). One limitation of the two-list paradigm is that it does not unambiguously demonstrate that LTM is the source of the PI effect: The source of PI precedes the target list by just about one second – the same interval that separated items within lists -- leaving open the possibility that representations of the first list were not entirely cleared from WM until the second list was tested.…”