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The effect of instructed refreshing on working memory: Is the memory boost a function of refreshing frequency or refreshing duration?

Vergauwe, Evie; Souza, Alessandra S; Langerock, Naomi; Oberauer, Klaus (2024). The effect of instructed refreshing on working memory: Is the memory boost a function of refreshing frequency or refreshing duration? Memory & Cognition:epub ahead of print.

Abstract

Refreshing is assumed to reactivate the contents of working memory in an attention-based way, resulting in a boost of the attended representations and hence improving their subsequent memory. Here, we examined whether the refreshing-induced memory boost is a constant or a gradual, time-dependent phenomenon. If the beneficial effect of refreshing on memory performance is due to the information being selected for refreshing (i.e., selection hypothesis), a constant memory boost is expected to occur each time an item is selected for refreshing, with better memory performance for items that are selected more often. If, however, the beneficial effect of refreshing on memory performance is due to spending time in the focus of attention during refreshing (i.e., duration hypothesis), a gradual memory boost is expected, with the size of the memory boost being a direct function of how long the item has been the object of focused attention. To distinguish between these hypotheses, we instructed and guided the use of refreshing during retention through the presentation of cues, and varied the number of refreshing steps and their duration independently. The number of refreshing steps, but not their duration, had an effect on recall, in agreement with the selection hypothesis. However, some of the results were less robust than anticipated, indicating that the effect of instructed refreshing is limited to certain task parameters.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:06 Faculty of Arts > Institute of Psychology
Dewey Decimal Classification:150 Psychology
Scopus Subject Areas:Social Sciences & Humanities > Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
Social Sciences & Humanities > Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Social Sciences & Humanities > Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Uncontrolled Keywords:Working memory · Focus of attention · Refreshing
Language:English
Date:2 December 2024
Deposited On:15 Jan 2025 15:08
Last Modified:16 Jan 2025 21:00
Publisher:Springer
ISSN:0090-502X
OA Status:Hybrid
Free access at:Publisher DOI. An embargo period may apply.
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01666-w
PubMed ID:39621247
Project Information:
  • Funder: University of Geneva
  • Grant ID:
  • Project Title:
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  • Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

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