Focused, unfocused, and defocused information in working memory

Abstract

The study investigated the effect of selection cues in working memory (WM) on the fate of not-selected contents of WM. Experiments 1A and 1B showed that focusing on 1 cued item in WM does not impair memory for the remaining items. The nonfocused items are maintained in WM even when this is not required by the task. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that items that were once focused in WM remain strengthened after the focus shifts away from them. When defocused items are presented as mismatching recognition probes, they are rejected better th Show more