Capacity limits in list item recognition: Evidence from proactive interference

Cowan, Nelson; Johnson, Troy D.; Saults, J. Scott

doi:10.1080/09658210344000206

Cited by 62 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…However, immunity to PI was found for the trials with a set size of four items. Cowan, Johnson, and Saults (2005) replicated this study using set sizes of three, four, six and eight. They too found PI in lists of six and eight items, and immunity to PI in lists of three and four items.…”

Section: The Embedded Processes Modelsupporting

confidence: 55%

“…A key finding which the FOA approach emphasises is the change in PI effects that occur with changes in list length, with immunity to PI being observed at around four items and below and PI being observed at list lengths greater than four (Halford et al, 1988;Cowan et al, 2005). The alternative cue plus code approach argues that it is not list length per se that determines PI effects rather it is whether or not there is a source of information available that provides ease of discrimination among potential competitors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Immediate tests of subspan lists are largely immune to PI when correct recall is the dependent measure (Dempster & Cooney, 1982;Humphreys & Tehan, 1992;Sanders & Willemsen, 1978;Tehan & Humphreys, 1995) or when reaction time is used in recognition paradigms (Cowan, Johnson, & Saults, 2005;Halford, Maybery, & Bain, 1988;Wickens et al, 1981). Two studies in particular are relevant to the linkage between capacity and PI.…”

Section: The Embedded Processes Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Immunity to proactive interference is not a property of the focus of attention in working memory

et al. 2010

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The Focus of Attention (FOA) is the latest incarnation of a limited capacity store in which a small number of items, in this case four, are deemed to be readily accessible and do not need to be retrieved. Thus a corollary of these ideas is that those items in the FOA are always immune to proactive interference. While there is empirical support for instances of immunity to PI in short-term retention tasks that involve memory for four-item lists, there are also many instances in which PI is observed with four-item lists as well as instances where PI and immunity to PI can be shown in the same experiment. In contrast to the FOA assumptions, an alternative cue-based account predicts both the presence of PI and immunity to PI as a function of the relation between the cues available and the particular test. Three experiments contrasted the FOA assumptions and the cue-based approach in a short-term cued recall task in which PI is manipulated by testing whether the presentation of previous, similar items would interfere with immediate recall of three list items. The results indicated that even with very short lists, both PI and immunity to PI could be observed. The PI effects observed in our experiment are at odds with the FOA approach and are more readily explained using the cueing account.

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Section: The Embedded Processes Modelsupporting

confidence: 55%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Embedded Processes Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Immunity to proactive interference is not a property of the focus of attention in working memory

et al. 2010

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“…At least 3 semantically-related items near the end of the list can show especially fast retrieval [17].There is interference from other, similar lists if the number of items exceeds basic capacity [18].…”

Section: Box 2: Some Techniques To Examine Working Memory Capacity LImentioning

confidence: 99%

Separating cognitive capacity from knowledge: a new hypothesis

Halford

Cowan

Andrews

2007

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

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259

198

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We propose that working memory (WM) and reasoning share related capacity limits. These limits are quantified in terms of the number of items that can be kept active in WM, and the number of interrelationships between elements that can be kept active in reasoning. The latter defines the complexity of reasoning problems and the processing loads they impose. Principled procedures for measuring, controlling or limiting recoding and other strategies for reducing memory and processing loads have opened up new research opportunities, and yielded orderly quantification of capacity limits in both memory and reasoning. We argue that both types of limit may be based on the limited ability to form and preserve bindings between elements in memory.The techniques that humans have for making the best use of available information processing capacity are of immense value, but they have to be controlled in order to study capacity limitations and effects of complexity. New, principled procedures for measuring, controlling or limiting recoding and other strategies whereby subjects reduce memory and processing loads have enabled complexity and capacity effects to be investigated independently of, and in interaction with, knowledge. In this paper we present an hypothesis that this development enables a new, integrated treatment of reasoning and working memory (WM), including an orderly quantification of capacity limits, and that this has opened up new research opportunities. Working memory and reasoningDevelopments in both theory and methodology have strengthened the links between WM and reasoning and some salient points are summarised in Box 1. We propose that the essential link between WM and reasoning is in the common requirement to bind elements to a coordinate system. Consider first short-term serial recall of the words, "Fido, Rover, Cleo". The words are assigned to ordinal positions when presented ( Figure 1A), but this assignment must be maintained for later recall, and this requires attention. Even in free recall (not shown), items on a trial must be bound to the present-trial concept or node in memory; binding may be even more extensive inasmuch as an associative network between items would greatly aid in recall. Now consider a choice reaction time task where participants press a different button in response

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“…The fact that individuals performed less well on our versions of the BrownPeterson task than on the comparable delayed span tasks indicates that the imposition of processing in the task does cause forgetting. It is quite possible that cross-trial proactive interference effects in this type of paradigm arise entirely because rehearsal is prevented by the processing within that trial with the result that individuals are unable to successfully maintain the memoranda in working memory (Bunting, 2006;Cowan, Johnson, & Saults, 2005;Kane & Engle, 2000).…”

Section: How Does Processing 61mentioning

confidence: 99%

"How does processing affect storage in working memory tasks? Evidence for both domain-general and domain-specific effects": Correction to Jarrold et al. (2011).

Jarrold¹,

Tam²,

Baddeley³

et al. 2011

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms AbstractThree studies are presented that examine why the processing demands within working memory tasks lead to forgetting of the memoranda. In each, separate groups of adult participants were asked to carry out either verbal or nonverbal operations on exactly the same processing materials, while maintaining verbal storage items. The imposition of verbal processing tended to produce greater forgetting, despite the fact that verbal processing operations took no longer to complete than nonverbal processing operations.However, nonverbal processing did cause forgetting, relative to baseline control conditions, and evidence from the timing of individuals' processing responses suggested that individuals in both processing groups slowed their responses in order to 'refresh' the memoranda. Taken together the data suggest that processing has a domain-general effect on working memory performance by impeding refreshment of memoranda, but can also cause effects, which appear domain-specific, either by blocking rehearsal or as a result of interference. In addition, the balance of these effects depends on the structure of the working memory task employed. How does processing 3How does processing affect storage in working memory tasks? Evidence for both domain-general and domain-specific effects Complex span tasks are seen by many to be the 'gold standard' measure of working memory Jarrold & Towse, 2006). In complex span tasks, participants are asked to encode lists of memoranda (which are to be recalled later) while intermittently performing some kind of distracting processing activity (Case, Kurland, & Goldberg, 1982;Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). In general, complex span performance is inferior to that of simple span, which measures immediate recall of memoranda after their presentation in the absence of distracting processing activity (e.g., Duff & Logie, 2001;Hutton & Towse, 2001;La Pointe & Engle, 1990).Consequently, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the presence of the processing activity within a complex span task tends to cause forgetting of memoranda presented during the task.One reason for the substantial research interest in the complex span task is that performance on this measure is typically a strong correlate of measures of intelligence in adults (Bayliss, Jarrold, Gunn, & Baddeley, 2003;Kyllonen & Christal, 1990;Süß, Oberauer, Wittmann, Wilhelm, & Schulze, 2002) and of academic achievement in children (Bayliss et al., 2003; Bull, Epsy, & Wiebe, 2008;Swanson, 2008). Furthermore, many would argue that complex span performance is a significantly stronger correlate of these abilities than is simple span (Conway, Cowan, Bunting, Therriault, & Minkoff, 2002; Engle, Tuholski, Luaghlin, & Conway, 1999; Oberauer, Schulze, Wilhelm, & Süß, 2005), indicating that the forgetting caused by the imposit...

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Capacity limits in list item recognition: Evidence from proactive interference

Cited by 62 publications

References 12 publications

Immunity to proactive interference is not a property of the focus of attention in working memory

Immunity to proactive interference is not a property of the focus of attention in working memory

Separating cognitive capacity from knowledge: a new hypothesis

"How does processing affect storage in working memory tasks? Evidence for both domain-general and domain-specific effects": Correction to Jarrold et al. (2011).

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