Search

Several models of working memory (WM), the cognitive system devoted to the temporary maintenance of a small amount of information in view of its treatment, assume that these two functions of storage and processing share a common and limited resource. However, the predictions issued from these models concerning this resource-sharing remain usually qualitative, and at which precise extent these functions are affected by their concurrent implementation remains undecided. The aim of the present study was to quantify this resource sharing by expressing storage and processing performance during a complex span task in terms of the proportion of the highest level of performance each participant was able to reach (i.e., their span) in each component when performed in isolation. Two experiments demonstrated that, despite substantial dual-task decrements, participants managed to preserve half or more of their best performance in both components, testifying for a remarkable robustness of the human cognitive system. The implications of these results for the main WM models are discussed., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

The continuous flow of information in which we are immersed obliges our cognitive system to maintain accessible the relevant elements for the time necessary for their processing. The present study investigated how working memory balances the resource demands of this necessary storage in the face of demanding processing. In four experiments using a complex span task, we examined the residual performance in memory and processing of individuals who performed at their best in the other component. Reciprocal dual-task costs pointed toward a resource sharing between the two functions. However, whereas prioritizing processing almost abolished participants' memory performance, more than 60% of their processing capacities were preserved while maintaining memory performance at span. We argue that this asymmetry might be adaptive in nature. Working memory might have evolved as an action-oriented system in which short-term memory capacity is structurally limited to spare the resources needed for processing the information it holds. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

How working memory supports dual-task performance is the focus of a long-standing debate. Most previous research on this topic has focused on participant performance data. In three experiments, we investigated whether changes in participant-reported strategies across single- and dual-task conditions might help resolve this debate by offering new insights that lead to fruitful integration of theories rather than perpetuating debate by attempting to identify which theory best fits the data. Results indicated that articulatory suppression was associated with reduced reports of the use of rehearsal and clustering strategies but to an increase of the reported use of a visual strategy. Elaboration and clustering strategies were reported less for memory under dual task compared with single task. Under both dual task and articulatory suppression, more participants reported attempting to remember fewer memory items than were presented (memory reduction strategy). For arithmetic verification, articulatory suppression and dual task resulted in a reduction in reports of a counting strategy and an increase in reports of a retrieval strategy for arithmetic knowledge. It is argued that experimenters should not assume that participants perform the same task in the same way under different experimental conditions and that carefulty investigation of how participants change their strategies in response to changes in experimental conditions has considerable potential for resolving theoretical challenges. It is argued further that this approach points toward the value of attempting to integrate rather than proliferate theories of working memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Although there is evidence that the effect of including a concurrent processing demand on the storage of information in working memory is disproportionately larger for older than younger adults, not all studies show this age-related impairment, and the critical factors responsible for any such impairment remain elusive. Here we assess whether domain overlap between storage and processing activities, and access to semantic representations, are important determinants of performance in a sample of younger and older adults ( N  = 119). We developed four versions of a processing task by manipulating the type of stimuli involved (either verbal or non-verbal) and the decision that participants had to make about the stimuli presented on the screen. Participants either had to perform a spatial judgement, in deciding whether the verbal or non-verbal item was presented above or below the centre of the screen, or a semantic judgement, in deciding whether the stimulus refers to something living or not living. The memory task was serial-ordered recall of visually presented letters. The study revealed a large increase in age-related memory differences when concurrent processing was required. These differences were smaller when storage and processing activities both used verbal materials. Dual-task effects on processing were also disproportionate for older adults. Age differences in processing performance appeared larger for tasks requiring spatial decisions rather than semantic decisions. We discuss these findings in relation to three competing frameworks of working memory and the extant literature on cognitive ageing.

Several working memory (WM) theories assume a resource sharing between the maintenance of information and its processing, whereas other theories suppose that these 2 functions of WM rely on different pools of resources. Studies that addressed this question by examining whether dual-task costs occur in tasks combining processing and storage have led to mixed results. Whereas some of them reported symmetric dual-task costs, others found no or negligible effects, while still others found a reduction in performance in memory but not in processing. In the present experiment, we tested whether these discrepancies in results might be due to participants strategically prioritizing one component of the task over the other. Thus, we asked participants to perform at their maximum level (i.e. span level) in one component of the dual-task and assessed performance on the other. In line with resource-sharing views, results indicated that performing at span on 1 task strongly degraded performance on the other, with symmetric costs. However, important residuals in both processing and storage suggested an unexpected resilience of the cognitive system that any resource-sharing theory must take into account. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Working memory is defined by many as the system that allows us to simultaneously store information over brief time periods while engaging in other information processing activities. In a previous study (Rhodes, Jaroslawska et al. (2019) Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 1204-1227.) we found that retention of serially presented letters was disrupted by the introduction of an arithmetic processing task during a 10 second delay period. Importantly, the magnitude of this dual task disruption increased with age from 18 to 81. The demands of each task were adjusted prior to dual task so that age differences did not reflect baseline differences in single task performance. Motivated by these findings, theories of working memory, and additional analyses of processing reaction times from this previous experiment, we report two experiments, using the same tasks and adjustment procedure, attempting to modulate the magnitude of age differences in dual task effects via manipulations focused on time for encoding to-be-remembered material. Providing a delay prior to processing activities, to facilitate switching between the two tasks, did not modulate age differences. Neither did separating the to-be-remembered material temporally, to allow for the creation of more distinct representations. These findings provide two replications of our initial finding and suggest that age differences in working memory dual tasking are not due to limitations in the speed of encoding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 45(9) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (see record 2019-48991-001). In the article, the copyright attribution was incorrectly listed and should have published under the Creative Commons CC-BY license. The correct copyright is "© 2018 The Author(s)." All versions of this article have been corrected.] Theories of working memory often disagree on the relationships between processing and storage, particularly on how heavily they rely on an attention-based limited resource. Some posit separation and specialization of resources resulting in minimal interference to memory when completing an ongoing processing task, while others argue for a greater overlap in the resources involved in concurrent tasks. Here, we present four experiments that investigated the presence or absence of dual-task costs for memory and processing. The experiments were carried in an adversarial collaboration in which researchers from three opposing theories collaboratively designed a set of experiments and provided differential predictions in line with each of their models. Participants performed delayed recall of aurally and visually presented letters and an arithmetic verification task either as single tasks or with the arithmetic verification task between presentation and recall of letter sequences. Single- and dual-task conditions were completed with and without concurrent articulatory suppression. A consistent pattern of dual-task and suppression costs was observed for memory, with smaller or null effects on processing. The observed data did not fit perfectly with any one framework, with each model having partial success in predicting data patterns. Implications for each of the models are discussed, with an aim for future research to investigate whether some combination of the models and their assumptions can provide a more comprehensive interpretation of the pattern of effects observed here and in relevant previous studies associated with each theoretical framework. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Evidence accumulated for more than a century on audience effects shows that being watched by others typically impairs performance on difficult tasks. However, recent research under the label of « choking under pressure » suggests that this performance impairment is, ironically, specific to the individuals who are the most qualified to succeed-those with a high working memory capacity (WMC). Here, we predicted and found that being watched by evaluative others such as the experimenter undermines proactive control on which the high-WMC individuals rely the more. These results refine our understanding of both audience and choking effects, and lead to innovative, practical recommendations for psychological science., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

There is a theoretical disagreement in the working memory literature, with some proposing that the storage and processing of information rely on distinct parts of the cognitive system and others who posit that they rely, to some extent, on a shared attentional capacity. This debate is mirrored in the literature on working memory and aging, where there have been mixed findings on the ability of older adults to perform simultaneous storage and processing tasks. We assess the overlap between storage and processing and how this changes with age using a procedure in which both tasks have been carefully adjusted to produce comparable levels of single-task performance across a sample (N = 164) of participants aged 18-81. By manipulating incentives to perform one task over the other, this procedure was also capable of disentangling concurrence costs (single- vs. dual-task performance) from prioritization costs (relative payoffs for storage vs. processing performance) in a theoretically meaningful manner. The study revealed a large general cost to serial letter recall performance associated with concurrent performance of an arithmetic verification processing task, a concurrence cost that increased with age. For the processing task, there was no such general concurrence cost. Rather, there was a prioritization effect in dual-task performance for both tasks, irrespective of age, in which performance levels depended on the relative emphasis assigned to memory versus processing. This prioritization effect was large, albeit with a large residual in performance. The findings place important constraints on both working memory theory and our understanding of how working memory changes across the adult lifespan. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Recent studies suggest that social presence undermines performance in difficult tasks because the presence of others would automatically capture the attention needed to achieve these tasks. Here, we tested whether this attentional capture (caused by the experimenter presence) affects working memory. Several models suggest that maintenance in working memory relies on an attentional mechanism. Besides this mechanism, another nonattentional verbal rehearsal could also maintain verbal information. In experiment 1, we varied the presence of the experimenter while participants had to memorize letters during a short retention interval. Moreover, a secondary task was introduced in some conditions to reduce the availability of attention. Experiment 2 replicated experiment 1 with the addition of a concurrent articulation to prevent the use of verbal rehearsal. The results showed that participants in the presence of the experimenter recalled fewer letters than participants who stayed alone in the cubicle, but only in experiment 2. These findings are the first evidence that social presence hinders attentional but not nonattentional maintenance in working memory. They have strong implications for understanding working memory and the impact of social presence, as well as important methodological implications., (© 2018 New York Academy of Sciences.)

Performing more poorly given one's skill level ("choking") is likely in situations that offer an incentive if a certain outcome is achieved (outcome pressure) or when one is being watched by others-especially when one's performance is being evaluated (monitoring pressure). According to the choking literature, outcome pressure is associated with reduced executive control of attention, whereas monitoring pressure is associated with increased, yet counterproductive, attention to skill processes. Here, we show the first evidence that monitoring pressure-being watched by the experimenter-may lead individuals with higher working memory to choke on a classic measure of executive control-just the task effect thought to result from outcome pressure. Not only does this finding help refine our understanding of the processes underlying choking under monitoring pressure, but it also leads to a new look at classic audience effects, with an important implication for experimental psychology.