Two maintenance mechanisms of verbal information in working memory

Camos, Valérie; Lagner, Prune; Barrouillet, Pierre

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2009.06.002

Cited by 228 publications

(361 citation statements)

References 34 publications

(65 reference statements)

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“…Work along this line needs to flesh out in more detail how the resource limit is to be combined with the mechanisms of interference. (Baddeley et al, 1975;Schweickert & Boruff, 1986) Neo-Piagetian general resource model (Case et al, 1982) Feature model (Nairne, 1990) Limited-capacity trace-decay theory (Jensen, 1988;Salthouse, 1996) Multiple-resource model (Alloway et al, 2006;Logie, 2011) Interference model (Oberauer & Kliegl, 2001 Primacy model (Page & Norris, 1998) 3CAPS (Just & Carpenter, 1992) SOB (Lewandowsky & Farrell, 2008b) and SOB-CS (Oberauer, Lewandowsky, et al, 2012) Task-switching model (Towse & Hitch, 1995;Towse, Hitch, & Hutton, 2000) Slot model (Luck & Vogel, 2013;Cowan et al, 2012) Temporal-clustering-andsequencing model (Farrell, 2012) Computational phonological loop model (Burgess & Hitch, 1999 Resource models of visual WM Time-based resource-sharing model Camos et al, 2009) Note: Theories in the table were selected because they attribute the WM capacity limit unambiguously to decay, limited resources, or interference, respectively. Some theories of WM were not included because they combine two or three of the hypotheses, or make no clear assumptions about what causes the capacity limit.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What limits working memory capacity?

Oberauer

Farrell

Jarrold

et al. 2016

Psychological Bulletin

276

213

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We review the evidence for the three principal theoretical contenders that vie to explain why and how working memory capacity is limited. We examine the possibility that capacity limitations arise from temporal decay; we examine whether they might reflect a limitation in cognitive resources; and we ask whether capacity might be limited because of mutual interference of representations in working memory. We evaluate each hypothesis against a common set of findings reflecting the capacity limit: The set-size effect and its modulation by domain-specificity and heterogeneity of the memory set; the effects of unfilled retention intervals and of distractor processing in the retention interval; and the pattern of correlates of working-memory tests. We conclude that---at least for verbal memoranda---a decay explanation is untenable. A resource-based view remains tenable but has difficulty accommodating several findings. The interference approach has its own set of difficulties but accounts best for the set of findings, and therefore appears to present the most promising approach for future development.Keywords: working memory, decay, resources, interference, individual differences WM Capacity 3 What Limits Working Memory Capacity?Working memory (WM) is the system that holds mental representations available for processing. Its limited capacity is a limiting factor for the complexity of our thoughts (Halford, Cowan, & Andrews, 2007;Oberauer, 2009). Measures of WM capacity have been identified as major determinants of cognitive development in childhood (Bayliss, Jarrold, Gunn, & Baddeley, 2003) and in old age (Park et al., 2002;Salthouse, 1994), as well as of individual differences in intellectual abilities (Conway, Kane, & Engle, 2003;Jarrold & Towse, 2006). Understanding why WM capacity is limited is therefore an essential step toward understanding why human cognitive abilities are limited, why individuals differ in these abilities, and how abilities develop over the lifespan.In this article we use the term WM capacity in a descriptive sense, referring to the fact that people can hold only a limited amount of mental content available for processing. The capacity limit is usually operationalized as a limit on how much new information people can remember over short periods of time (in the order of seconds), but there are reasons to believe (discussed below) that the capacity limit also applies to people's ability to make information in the current environment simultaneously available for processing.Hypotheses about what limits WM capacity can be organized into three groups: (1) Some theories assume that representations in WM decay over time, unless decay is prevented by some form of restoration process such as rehearsal. According to this view, WM has limited capacity because only a limited amount of information can be rehearsed before it fades away into an irrecoverable state (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975;Schweickert & Boruff, 1986). (2) Alternatively, WM capacity has been characterized as a limited resourc...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What limits working memory capacity?

Oberauer

Farrell

Jarrold

et al. 2016

Psychological Bulletin

276

213

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“…Several authors even argue that the maintenance of visuospatial information would be devoid of specific mechanism (Morey & Mall, 2012;Vergauwe et al, 2010;Vergauwe, Camos, & Barrouillet, 2013). According to this assumption, the maintenance of visuospatial information would rely on the sole attentional resources assumed to fuel the episodic buffer, while the maintenance of verbal information could benefit from these attentional resources as well as from verbal rehearsal (Camos, Lagner, & Barrouillet, 2009). In line with previous estimates (Cowan, 2001(Cowan, , 2005, our participants were able to maintain about four spatial locations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The maintenance of cross-domain associations in the episodic buffer.

Langerock¹,

Vergauwe²,

Barrouillet³

2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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The episodic buffer has been described as a structure of working memory capable of maintaining multimodal information in an integrated format. Although the role of the episodic buffer in binding features into objects has received considerable attention, several of its characteristics have remained rather underexplored. This is the case for its maintenance capacity limits and its separability from domain-specific maintenance buffers. The present study addressed these questions, making use of a complex span paradigm in which participants were asked to maintain cross-domain (i.e., verbal-spatial) associations. The 1st experiment showed that the capacity limit for these cross-domain associations proved to be lower than the capacity limit for single features, and did not exceed 3. Cross-domain associations and single features depended, however, to the same extent on attentional resources for their maintenance. The 2nd experiment showed that domain-specific (verbal or spatial) resources were not involved in the maintenance of cross-domain information, revealing a clear distinction between the episodic buffer and the domain-specific buffers. Overall, in line with the episodic buffer hypothesis, these findings support the existence of a central system of limited capacity for the maintenance of cross-domain information.

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“…Il est à noter que cette réactivation n'implique pas nécessairement le processus de répétition articulatoire que Baddeley décrit dans son modèle de la boucle phonologique (Baddeley, 1986 ;Baddeley & Logie, 1999), mais plutôt, comme l'a montré Cowan (1992), un processus de récupération rapide grâce à une refocalisation attentionnelle. Ce mécanisme de réactivation par focalisation attentionnelle est indépendant de la répétition articulatoire (Camos, Lagner et Barrouillet, 2009 ;Camos, Mora, & Oberauer, 2011) et peut s'appliquer à des items aussi bien verbaux que visuospatiaux . Ce genre de rafraîchissement peut avoir lieu même pendant de courtes pauses qui pourraient survenir pendant le traitement en cours.…”

Section: Le Modèle De Partage Temporel Des Ressourcesunclassified