Attentional refreshing moderates the word frequency effect in immediate and delayed recall tasks (original) (raw)
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Evidence for spontaneous serial refreshing in verbal working memory?
Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2017
Working memory (WM) keeps information temporarily accessible for ongoing cognition. One proposed mechanism to keep information active in WM is refreshing. This mechanism is assumed to operate by bringing memory items into the focus of attention, thereby serially refreshing the content of WM. We report two experiments in which we examine evidence for the spontaneous occurrence of serial refreshing in verbal WM. Participants had to remember series of red letters, while black probe letters were presented between these memory items, with each probe to be judged present in or absent from the list presented so far, as quickly as possible (i.e., the probe-span task). Response times to the probes were used to infer the status of the representations in WM and, in particular, to examine whether the content of the focus of attention changed over time, as would be expected if serial refreshing occurs spontaneously during inter-item pauses. In sharp contrast with this hypothesis, our results ind...
Memory & Cognition, 2011
Three experiments are reported that addressed the nature of processing in working memory by investigating patterns of delayed cued recall and free recall of items initially studied during complex and simple span tasks. In Experiment 1, items initially studied during a complex span task (i.e., operation span) were more likely to be recalled after a delay in response to temporal-contextual cues, relative to items from subspan and supraspan list lengths in a simple span task (i.e., word span). In Experiment 2, items initially studied during operation span were more likely to be recalled from neighboring serial positions during delayed free recall than were items studied during word span trials. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the number of attentional refreshing opportunities strongly predicts episodic memory performance, regardless of whether the information is presented in a spaced or massed format in a modified operation span task. The results indicate that the contentcontext bindings created during complex span trials reflect attentional refreshing opportunities that are used to maintain items in working memory.
Long-term semantic representations moderate the effect of attentional refreshing on episodic memory
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2014
The McCabe effect (McCabe, 2008) refers to an advantage in episodic memory (EM) retrieval for memoranda studied in complex span versus simple span tasks, particularly for memoranda presented in earlier serial positions. This finding has been attributed to the necessity to refresh memoranda during complex span tasks that, in turn, promotes content-context binding in working memory (WM). Several frameworks have conceptualized WM as being embedded in long-term memory. Thus, refreshing may be less efficient when memoranda are not wellestablished in long-term semantic memory (SM). To investigate this, we presented words and non-words on simple and complex span trials in order to manipulate the long-term semantic representations of the memoranda with the requirement to refresh the memoranda during WM. A recognition test was administered that required participants to make a Remember-Know decision for each memorandum recognized as old. The results replicated the McCabe effect, but only for words, and the beneficial effect of refreshing opportunities was exclusive to recollection. These results extend previous research by indicating that the predictive relationship between WM refreshing and long-term EM is specific to recollection, and, furthermore, moderated by representations in long-term SM. This supports the predictions of WM frameworks that espouse the importance of refreshing in content-context binding, but also those that view WM as being an activated subset of and, therefore, constrained by the contents of long-term memory.
Many working memory (WM) models propose that the focus of attention (or primary memory) has a capacity limit of one to four items, and therefore, that performance on WM tasks involves retrieving some items from long-term (or secondary) memory (LTM). In the present study, we present evidence suggesting that recall of even one item on a WM task can involve retrieving it from LTM. The WM task required participants to make a deep (living/nonliving) or shallow ("e"/no "e") level-of-processing (LOP) judgment on one word and to recall the word after a 10-s delay on each trial. During the delay, participants either rehearsed the word or performed an easy or a hard math task. When the to-beremembered item could be rehearsed, recall was fast and accurate. When it was followed by a math task, recall was slower, error-prone, and benefited from a deeper LOP at encoding, especially for the hard math condition. The authors suggest that a covert-retrieval mechanism may have refreshed the item during easy math, and that the hard math condition shows that even a single item cannot be reliably held in WM during a sufficiently distracting task-therefore, recalling the item involved retrieving it from LTM. Additionally, performance on a final free recall (LTM) test was better for items recalled following math than following rehearsal, suggesting that initial recall following math involved elaborative retrieval from LTM, whereas rehearsal did not. The authors suggest that the extent to which performance on WM tasks involves retrieval from LTM depends on the amounts of disruption to both rehearsal and covert-retrieval/refreshing maintenance mechanisms.
A recent theory proposes that storing information in long-term memory depletes a limited resource which recovers gradually over time. Here, we provide a critical test of this theory by showing that free recall is worse if a word is preceded during study by a low-frequency word and by a short inter-stimulus-interval (ISI). These effects interacted – the preceding study word’s frequency effect decreased as the pre-ISI increased. The duration of subsequent ISI had no effect. The resource-depletion-and-recovery model explains these results by positing that the amount of resources required for encoding in long-term memory is an inverse function of the existing representation’s strength, and that these resources recover more when the pre-ISI is longer. The theory’s predictions are contrasted with three alternatives – temporal distinctiveness, selective rehearsal and refreshing, and short-term consolidation – none of which fit the data. We compare each set of predictions using the PEERS da...
Journal of Experimental Psychology-learning Memory and Cognition, 1997
Four experiments investigated the mechanisms responsible for the advantage enjoyed by high-frequency words in short-term memory tasks. Experiment 1 demonstrated effects of word frequency on memory span that were independent of differences in speech rate. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that word frequency has an increasing effect on serial recall across serial positions, but Experiment 4 showed that this effect was abolished for backward recall. A model that includes a redintegration process that operates to "clean up" decayed short-term memory traces is proposed, and the multinomial processing tree model described by is used to provide a quantitative fit to data from Experiments 2, 3, and 4.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2012
Recent studies have raised questions about the extent to which working memory (WM) is dissociable from secondary or long-term memory (LTM). Although many similarities may exist between immediate retrieval on WM span tasks and delayed retrieval on LTM tests, important differences exist as well. To illustrate this point, Craik and Tulving"s classic levels-of-processing paradigm was adapted for use in a WM span task: Participants made visual, phonological, or semantic judgments about 33 words using the same stimuli and instructions as Craik and Tulving (1975), but were to recall words immediately after every 3 or 8 words (rather than after all words were processed). In the context of this WM span task (Experiment 1), no benefit of deeper processing occurred on immediate recall, even though subsequent recognition of the same items showed the classic levels-of-processing effect. However, when words were processed in the same way but immediate recall was not required (Experiment 2), surprise immediate recall tests did demonstrate a levels-of-processing effect, but only for supraspan (8-item) lists. These results demonstrate both similarities and differences between WM and LTM. One way these disparate effects can be reconciled is within a transfer-appropriateprocessing account of the WM/LTM distinction. That is, the WM/LTM distinction depends on the extent to which there is a match (or mismatch) between the processes that are used for initial encoding and subsequent retrieval. For example, when WM tests involved intentional encoding and active maintenance of to-be-remembered words (Experiment 1), a levels-of-processing effect was not observed. However, for surprise recall of supraspan (8-item) lists in Experiment 2, initial processing was not directed at temporary maintenance for immediate recall (because the test came as a surprise), which iii made this situation similar to the LTM task. Under these conditions, a levels-ofprocessing effect (like that observed on LTM tasks) was observed on the WM span task, consistent with a transfer-appropriate-processing account of the WM/LTM distinction. iv Acknowledgments I would like to thank my core dissertation committee members, Joel Myerson, Roddy Roediger, and Mitch Sommers for their guidance and support throughout my doctoral training. I thank Sandra Hale for her guidance and support and many helpful discussions on this dissertation and related work. I thank Gus Craik for many helpful discussions in preparation of this dissertation. I thank members of the Sommers Speech and Hearing Lab, the Hale/Myerson Cognitive Development Lab, and the Roediger Memory Lab for helpful comments as well. I am grateful for financial support from an NIA Institutional Training Grant (PI"s: Martha Storandt and David Balota) that funded the present research. I thank Matt Robbins for his assistance with programming the present experiments and collecting, organizing, and analyzing the data. Finally, I thank my wonderful wife, Denise Rose, for her unending love and support, which even included helping me collect some of the data for the present experiments. Your love and devotion have truly surpassed all expectationsthank you.
The word frequency effect in short-term serial recall
2010
Recent research into the nature of the frequency effect in immediate serial recall has revealed that some aspects of the mnemonic influence of word frequency over the short-term are not well accommodated by current explanations of the effect (i.e. item-based redintegration). In particular, the finding that how well a word is recalled is dependent on the relationship between that word’s
What is attentional refreshing in working memory?
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2018
Working memory is one of the most important topics of research in cognitive psychology. The cognitive revolution that introduced the computer metaphor to describe human cognitive functioning called for this system in charge of the temporary storage of incoming or retrieved information to permit its processing. In the past decades, one particular mechanism of maintenance, attentional refreshing, has attracted an increasing amount of interest in the field of working memory. However, this mechanism remains rather mysterious, and its functioning is conceived in very different ways across the literature. This article presents an up-to-date review on attentional refreshing through the joint effort of leading researchers in the domain. It highlights points of agreement and delineates future avenues of research.
The Recall of Information from Working Memory
Experimental Psychology (formerly "Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie"), 2008
In four experiments we test a recall reconstruction hypothesis for working memory, according to which reading span items can be recovered or specified from multiple memory representations. Each reading span experiment involves memoranda either embedded within or unrelated to the sentence content. This manipulation affected the timing of recall, with longer pauses accompanying items that are linked to processing. Levels of recall accuracy vary between these task formats, dependent on the orienting task for processing. Experiment 1 compares the chronometry of spoken recall for word span and reading span, in which participants complete an unfinished sentence. Experiment 2 and 3 confirm recall time differences without using word generation requirements, while Experiments 4 used an item and order response choice paradigm with nonspoken responses. We argue that verbal and manual recall timing offers an informative measure for understanding working memory.