The fate of distractors in working memory: No evidence for their active removal

Dagry, Isabelle; Barrouillet, Pierre

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2017.08.011

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…They were aged between 19 and 45 years (mean 23.08, 19 females) for Experiment 1a and between 18 and 43 years (mean 22.58, 18 females) for Experiment 1b. The size of the samples in this and the following experiments (i.e., about 24) was fixed following several studies having provided evidence that such a sample size is sufficient to reveal interference effects in WM tasks (e.g., Barrouillet, Uittenhove, Lucidi, & Langerock, 2018; Camos, Mora, & Barrouillet, 2013; Dagry & Barrouillet, 2017; Plancher & Barrouillet, 2013). For all the experiments of this study, participants were given the opportunity to earn course credit or 20 CHF for their participation.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is working memory storage intrinsically domain-specific?

Uittenhove

Chaabi

Camos

et al. 2019

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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It has recently been claimed that working memory (WM) storage is intrinsically domain-specific because the concurrent maintenance of an auditory and a visuospatial memory set did not involve any dual-task cost (Fougnie, Zughni, Godwin, & Marois, 2015). Using the same paradigm, we asked participants to concurrently maintain verbal auditory memory sets of 2, 4, or 6 letters along with visuospatial memory sets of 1, 3, or 5 dots in spatial locations. Whereas using the probe-recognition procedure used by Fougnie, Zughni, Godwin, and Marois (2015) replicated the absence of dual-task cost, a recall procedure revealed systematic interference between auditory-verbal and visuospatial WM. Increasing verbal WM load had a detrimental effect on the recall of visuospatial information, and vice versa, whether or not the task was performed under concurrent articulation. These between-domain interference effects proved to be non-negligible in magnitude when compared with within-domain effects in both the verbal (letters and digits) and visuospatial (spatial locations and movements) domains. The implication of these findings for our understanding of the structure and functioning of WM as well as the potential impact of the methods used to assess WM storage (i.e., recognition vs. recall) are discussed.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is working memory storage intrinsically domain-specific?

Uittenhove

Chaabi

Camos

et al. 2019

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…For this test to be informative, care must be taken that the test of accessibility actually measures the information that is assumed to be removed. A recent study by Dagry and Barrouillet illustrates the potential problems in this endeavor. These authors set out to test the assumption in the SOB‐CS model that, in a complex‐span task, memory traces of distractors are removed from working memory.…”

Section: What Counts As Evidence Against Removal?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This could be accomplished, for instance, by asking participants (perhaps on a tiny subset of trials, as in Muter) to recall the distractors in serial order, or to recall the distractors following a given memory item. Dagry and Barrouillet, however, tested memory for distractors independent of their bindings to list positions through a free‐recall test and through short‐term repetition priming. Both forms of memory test gauge the strength of some form of memory about the recent occurrence of the distractor stimuli, not about their bindings to specific list positions.…”

Section: What Counts As Evidence Against Removal?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The removal of information from working memory

Lewis-Peacock

Kessler

Oberauer

2018

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

121

104

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What happens to goal‐relevant information in working memory after it is no longer needed? Here, we review evidence for a selective removal process that operates on outdated information to limit working memory load and hence facilitates the maintenance of goal‐relevant information. Removal alters the representations of irrelevant content so as to reduce access to it, thereby improving access to the remaining relevant content and also facilitating the encoding of new information. Both behavioral and neural evidence support the existence of a removal process that is separate from forgetting due to decay or interference. We discuss the potential mechanisms involved in removal and characterize the time course and duration of the process. In doing so, we propose the existence of two forms of removal: one is temporary, and reversible, which modifies working memory content without impacting content‐to‐context bindings, and another is permanent, which unbinds the content from its context in working memory (without necessarily impacting long‐term forgetting). Finally, we discuss limitations on removal and prescribe conditions for evaluating evidence for or against this process.

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“…It is important to point out that distractor removal probably cannot completely replace both consolidation and refreshing as mnemonic mechanisms (see e.g., Refs. 30,31). Oberauer and Lewandowsky 12 used distractors that were similar to the verbal items to be remembered, allowing intrusions, and found little additional interference when they interposed a spatial task between distractors (attributed to interference with the removal process itself).…”

Section: Refreshing and Removalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can we distinguish three maintenance processes in working memory?

Morey

Cowan

2018

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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We describe three mechanisms—consolidation, refreshing, and removal—defined in several theoretical reviews in a recent Ann NY Acad Sci special issue as processes that may serve to strengthen new memories. We detail their explicit and implied differences and similarities, and highlight points upon which theorists disagree about their supposed characteristics. We consider the challenges remaining in refining definitions of these processes and with situating them within working memory theories, and consider how these process definitions and theory should restrict each other.

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The fate of distractors in working memory: No evidence for their active removal

Cited by 16 publications

References 30 publications

Is working memory storage intrinsically domain-specific?

Is working memory storage intrinsically domain-specific?

The removal of information from working memory

Can we distinguish three maintenance processes in working memory?

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