When does a good working memory counteract proactive interference? Surprising evidence from a probe recognition task

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Volumn 142, Issue 1, 2013, Pages 12-17

  Cowan, Nelson ^a   Scott Saults, J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI   (United States)

Author keywords

Individual differences; Metamemory; Proactive interference; Working memory; Working memory span

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; ATTENTION; FEMALE; HUMAN; INDIVIDUALITY; MALE; PROACTIVE INHIBITION; REACTION TIME; RECOGNITION; SHORT TERM MEMORY;

ATTENTION; FEMALE; HUMANS; INDIVIDUALITY; MALE; MEMORY, SHORT-TERM; PROACTIVE INHIBITION; REACTION TIME; RECOGNITION (PSYCHOLOGY);

MLCS; MLOWN;

EID: 84880931828     PISSN: 00963445     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1037/a0027804     Document Type: Article

References (43)

1. Baddeley, A. D., & Hitch, G. (1974). Working memory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 8, pp. 47-89). New York, NY: Academic Press.
2. Balota, D. A., & Yap, M. J. (2011). Moving beyond the mean in studies of mental chronometry: The power of response time distributional analyses. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 160-166. doi:10.1177/0963721411408885
3. Battig, W. F., & Montague, W. E. (1969). Category norms for verbal items in 56 categories: A replication and extension of the Connecticut category norms. Journal of Experimental Psychology Monographs, 80(3, Pt. 2). doi:10.1037/h0027577
4. Borella, E., Carretti, B., & Mammarella, I. C. (2006). Do working memory and susceptibility to interference predict individual differences in fluid intelligence? European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 18, 51-69. doi:10.1080/09541440500215962
5. Braver, T. S., Gray, J. R., & Burgess, G. C. (2007). Explaining the many varieties of working memory variation: Dual mechanisms of cognitive control. In A. Conway, C. Jarrold, M. Kane, A. Miyake, & J. Towse (Eds.), Variation in working memory (pp. 76-106). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
6. Broadbent, D. E. (1975). The magic number seven after fifteen years. In A. Kennedy & A. Wilkes (Eds.), Studies in long-term memory (pp. 3-18). Oxford, England: Wiley.
7. Bunting, M. (2006). Proactive interference and item similarity in working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32, 183-196. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.32.2.183
8. Burgess, G. C., Gray, J. R., Conway, A. R. A., & Braver, T. S. (2011). Neural mechanisms of interference control underlie the relationship between fluid intelligence and working memory span. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140, 674-692. doi:10.1037/a0024695
9. Carroll, L. M., Jalbert, A., Penney, A. M., Neath, I., Surprenant, A. M., & Tehan, G. (2010). Evidence for proactive interference in the focus of attention of working memory. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 208-214. doi:10.1037/a0021011
10. Chen, Z., & Cowan, N. (2009). Core verbal working memory capacity: The limit in words retained without covert articulation. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 1420-1429. doi:10.1080/17470210802453977
11. Cohen, R. L., & Heath, M. (1990). The development of serial short-term memory and the articulatory loop hypothesis. Intelligence, 14, 151-171.
12. Conway, A. R. A., & Engle, R. W. (1994). Working memory and retrieval: A resource-dependent inhibition model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123, 354-373. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.123.4.354
13. Cousineau, D., Brown, S., & Heathcote, A. (2004). Fitting distributions using maximum likelihood: Methods and packages. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 36, 742-756. doi:10.3758/BF03206555
14. Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 87-114. doi:10.1017/S0140525X01003922
15. Cowan, N., Elliott, E. M., Saults, J. S., Morey, C. C., Mattox, S., Hism-jatullina, A., & Conway, A. R. A. (2005). On the capacity of attention: Its estimation and its role in working memory and cognitive aptitudes. Cognitive Psychology, 51, 42-100. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2004.12.001
16. Cowan, N., Johnson, T. D., & Saults, J. S. (2005). Capacity limits in list item recognition: Evidence from proactive interference. Memory, 13, 293-299. doi:10.1080/09658210344000206
17. Daneman, M., & Merikle, P. M. (1996). Working memory and language comprehension: A meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3, 422-433. doi:10.3758/BF03214546
18. Emery, L., Hale, S., & Myerson, J. (2008). Age differences in proactive interference, working memory, and abstract reasoning. Psychology and Aging, 23, 634-645. doi:10.1037/a0012577
19. Engle, R. W., Tuholski, S. W., Laughlin, J. E., & Conway, A. R. A. (1999). Working memory, short-term memory, and general fluid intelligence: A latent-variable approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128, 309-331. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.128.3.309
20. Feredoes, E., & Postle, B. R. (2010)., Prefrontal control of familiarity and recollection in working memory. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22, 323-330. doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21252
21. Friedman, N. P., & Miyake, A. (2004). The relations among inhibition and interference control functions: A latent-variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 101-135. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.133.1.101
22. Halford, G. S., Maybery, M. T., & Bain, J. D. (1988). Set-size effects in primary memory: An age-related capacity limitation? Memory & Cognition, 16, 480-487. doi:10.3758/BF03214229
23. Heathcote, A., Brown, S., & Mewhort, D. J. K. (2002). Quantile maximum likelihood estimation of response time distributions. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9, 394-401. doi:10.3758/BF03196299
24. Hedden, T., & Yoon, C. (2006). Individual differences in executive processing predict susceptibility to interference in verbal working memory. Neuropsychology, 20, 511-528. doi:10.1037/0894-4105.20.5.511
25. Jonides, J., & Nee, D. E. (2006). Brain mechanisms of proactive interference in working memory. Neuroscience, 139, 181-193. doi:10.1016/j.neuroscience.2005.06.042
26. Kail, R., & Hall, L. K. (1999). Sources of developmental change in children's word-problem performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 660-668. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.91.4.660
27. Kane, M. J., & Engle, R. W. (2000). Working-memory capacity, proactive interference, and divided attention: Limits on long-term memory retrieval. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 336-358. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.26.2.336
28. Lustig, C., Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. T. (2007). Inhibitory deficit theory: Recent developments in a "new view." In D. S. Gorfein & MacLeod, C. M. (Eds.), Inhibition in cognition (pp. 145-162). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. doi:10.1037/11587-008
29. Mahalanobis, P. C. (1936). On the generalised distance in statistics. Proceedings of the National Institute of Sciences of India, 2, 49-55.
30. Matzke, D., & Wagenmakers, E. (2009). Psychological interpretation of the ex-Gaussian and shifted Wald parameters: A diffusion model analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 798-817. doi:10.3758/PBR.16.5.798
31. McVay, J. C., & Kane, M. J. (in press). Drifting from slow to "d'oh!" Working memory and mind-wandering predict extreme reaction times. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
32. Meng, X.-L., Rosenthal, R., & Rubin, D. B. (1992). Comparing correlated correlation coefficients. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 172-175. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.111.1.172
33. Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97. doi:10.1037/h0043158
34. Oberauer, K., Lange, E., & Engle, R. E. (2004). Working memory capacity and resistance to interference. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 80-96. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2004.03.003
35. Oberauer, K., & Vockenberg, K. (2009). Updating of working memory: Lingering bindings. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 967-987. doi:10.1080/17470210802372912
36. Rohrer, D., & Wixted, J. T. (1994). An analysis of latency and interre-sponse time in free recall. Memory & Cognition, 22, 511-524. doi: 10.3758/BF03198390
37. Rosen, V. M., & Engle, R. W. (1998). Working memory capacity and suppression. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 418-436. doi: 10.1006/jmla.1998.2590
38. Salthouse, T. A., Siedlecki, K. L., & Krueger, L. E. (2006). An individual differences analysis of memory control. Journal of Memory and Language, 55, 102-125. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2006.03.006
39. Schmiedek, F., Oberauer, K., Wilhelm, O., Sufi, H.-M., & Wittmann, W. W. (2007). Individual differences in components of reaction time distributions and their relations to working memory and intelligence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 414-429. doi: 10.1037/0096-3445.136.3.414
40. Unsworth, N. (2010). Interference control, working memory capacity, and cognitive abilities: A latent variable analysis. Intelligence, 38, 255-267. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2009.12.003
41. Unsworth, N., & Engle, R. W. (2007). The nature of individual differences in working memory capacity: Active maintenance in primary memory and controlled search from secondary memory. Psychological Review, 114, 104-132. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.114.1.104
42. Vogel, E. K., McCollough, A. W., & Machizawa, M. G. (2005). Neural measures reveal individual differences in controlling access to working memory. Nature, 438, 500-503. doi:10.1038/nature04171
43. Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (1993). Proactive interference and the dynamics of free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19, 1024-1039. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.19.5.1024