Processing of representations in declarative and procedural working memory

Souza, Alessandra S.; Oberauer, Klaus; Gade, Miriam; Druey, Michel D.

doi:10.1080/17470218.2011.640403

Cited by 30 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…One of the main assumptions of this model is that analogous mechanisms serve to select declarative and procedural representations, a prediction supported by empirical findings (Souza, Oberauer, Gade, & Druey, 2012). Another strong assumption is that the region of direct access and the bridge are independent systems with separate capacities, in such a way that "increasing the load of declarative working memory should not affect the efficiency of executing a task held in procedural working memory, and conversely, increasing the load on procedural working memory should not impair retention of information in declarative memory" (Oberauer, 2009, p. 74).…”

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confidence: 79%

An empirical test of the independence between declarative and procedural working memory in Oberauer’s (2009) theory

et al. 2014

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It has recently been suggested that working memory could be conceived as two symmetrical subsystems with analogous structure and processing principles: a declarative working memory storing objects of thought available for cognitive operations, and a procedural working memory holding representations of what to do with these objects (Oberauer, Psychology of learning and motivation 51: 45-100, 2009). Within this theoretical framework, the two subsystems are thought to be independent and fueled by their own capacity. The present study tested this hypothesis through two experiments using a complex span task in which participants were asked to maintain consonants for further recall while performing response selection tasks. In line with Oberauer's conception, the load of the procedural working memory was varied by manipulating the number of stimulus-response mappings of the response selection task. Increasing the number of these mappings had a strong detrimental effect on recall performance. Besides contradicting Oberauer's proposal, this finding supports models that assume a resource-sharing between processing and storage in working memory.

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confidence: 79%

An empirical test of the independence between declarative and procedural working memory in Oberauer’s (2009) theory

et al. 2014

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“…As a consequence, comparable behavioral effects are observed for the two sub-systems. For example, when participants are asked to switch between memory lists on a trial-bytrial basis, there are costs to keep more than one list available (list-mixing costs) and to switch between lists (list-switching costs), as is the case when participants have to switch between task sets (Souza, Oberauer, Gade, & Druey, 2012). In another study (Oberauer, Souza, Druey, & Gade, 2013), we further extended the analogy to the mechanisms of selecting individual elements within memory sets or task sets: After selecting and executing a response within a task set, that response is temporarily inhibited, making it harder to subsequently select the same response in the context of another task set (Druey, 2014).…”

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confidence: 99%

Analogous selection processes in declarative and procedural working memory: N-2 list-repetition and task-repetition costs

et al. 2016

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Working memory (WM) holds and manipulates representations for ongoing cognition. Oberauer (Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 51, 45-100, 2009) distinguishes between two analogous WM sub-systems: a declarative WM which handles the objects of thought, and a procedural WM which handles the representations of (cognitive) actions. Here, we assessed whether analogous effects are observed when participants switch between memory sets (declarative representations) and when they switch between task sets (procedural representations). One mechanism assumed to facilitate switching in procedural WM is the inhibition of previously used, but currently irrelevant task sets, as indexed by n-2 taskrepetition costs (Mayr & Keele, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129(1), 2000). In this study we tested for an analogous effect in declarative WM. We assessed the evidence for n-2 list-repetition costs across eight experiments in which participants switched between memory lists to perform speeded classifications, mental arithmetic, or a local recognition test. N-2 list-repetition costs were obtained consistently in conditions assumed to increase interference between memory lists, and when lists formed chunks in longterm memory. Further analyses across experiments revealed a substantial contribution of episodic memory to n-2 listrepetition costs, thereby questioning the interpretation of n-2 repetition costs as reflecting inhibition. We reanalyzed the data of eight task-switching experiments, and observed that episodic memory also contributes to n-2 task-repetition costs. Taken together, these results show analogous processing principles in declarative and procedural WM, and question the relevance of inhibitory processes for efficient switching between mental sets.

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“…In designing our study, we considered Oberauer (2009) who suggested a distinction between procedural and declarative working memory processing. Declarative working memory was suggested to hold representations relevant to knowledge and facts (based on stimulusstimulus associations), while procedural working memory was proposed to hold action rules (Oberauer et al, 2013;Souza et al, 2012; but see Barrouillet, Corbin, Dagry, & Camos, 2014 for different results). Training studies have mainly explored declarative working memory processing (e.g., N-back, Span tasks), where participants are asked to memorized the presentation order of a stimulus set (i.e., stimulus-location associations).…”

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confidence: 99%

Formation of abstract task representations: Exploring dosage and mechanisms of working memory training effects

et al. 2018

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Working memory is strongly involved in human reasoning, abstract thinking and decision making. Past studies have shown that working memory training generalizes to untrained working memory tasks with similar structure (near-transfer effect). Here, we focused on two questions: First, we ask how much training might be required in order to find a reliable near-transfer effect? Second, we ask which choice- mechanism might underlie training benefits? Participants were allocated to one of three groups: working-memory training (combined set-shifting and N-back task), active-control (visual search) and no-contact control. During pre/post testing, all participants completed tests tapping procedural and declarative working memory as well as reasoning. We found improved performance only in the procedural working-memory transfer tasks, a transfer task that shared a similar structure to that of the training task. Intermediate testing throughout the training period suggest that this effect emerged as soon as after 2 training sessions. We applied evidence accumulation modeling to investigate the choice process responsible for this near-transfer effect and found that trained participants, compared with active-controls had quicker retrieval of the action rules, and more efficient classification of the target. We conclude that participants were able to form abstract representations of the task procedure (i.e., stimulus-response rules) that was then ~applied to novel stimuli and responses.

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Processing of representations in declarative and procedural working memory

Cited by 30 publications

References 56 publications

An empirical test of the independence between declarative and procedural working memory in Oberauer’s (2009) theory

An empirical test of the independence between declarative and procedural working memory in Oberauer’s (2009) theory

Analogous selection processes in declarative and procedural working memory: N-2 list-repetition and task-repetition costs

Formation of abstract task representations: Exploring dosage and mechanisms of working memory training effects

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