Abstract
There is broad agreement that working memory is closely related to attention. This article delineates several theoretical options for conceptualizing this link, and evaluates their viability in light of their theoretical implications and the empirical support they received. A first divide exists between the concept of attention as a limited resource, and the concept of attention as selective information processing. Theories conceptualizing attention as a resource assume that this resource is responsible for the limited capacity of working memory. Three versions of this idea have been proposed: Attention as a resource for storage and processing, a shared resource for perceptual attention and memory maintenance, and a resource for the control of attention. The first of these three is empirically well supported, but the other two are not. By contrast, when attention is understood as a selection mechanism, it is usually not invoked to explain the capacity limit of working memory – rather, researchers ask how different forms of attention interact with working memory, in two areas. The first pertains to attentional selection of the contents of working memory, controlled by mechanisms of filtering out irrelevant stimuli, and removing no-longer relevant representations from working memory. Within working memory contents, a single item is often selected into the focus of attention for processing. The second area pertains to the role of working memory in cognitive control. Working memory contributes to controlling perceptual attention – by holding templates for targets of perceptual selection – and controlling action – by holding task sets to implement our current goals.
Highlights
Fukuda, Watanabe, and Vogel (2013) measured the contralateral delay activity (CDA), a neural marker of the number of objects a person holds in visual working memory (WM) (Luria, Balaban, Awh, & Vogel, 2016; Vogel & Machizawa, 2004) while participants attended to a variable number of color patches still in view, or attempted to remember them after their offset
The control process consists of selecting these representations into WM – once they are established in WM, they have their influence on attention and action automatically: Perceptual attention is “captured” by stimuli matching the content of the focus of attention even when this is only detrimental to performance in the current task (Foerster & Schneider, 2018; Gao et al, 2016); newly instructed tasks, once implemented as task sets in WM, function like a “prepared reflex”, influencing response selection even when they are currently not relevant (Meiran, Liefooghe, & De Houwer, 2017)
The first approach entails the theoretical commitment that a limited attentional resource is at least in part responsible for the capacity limit of WM
Summary
There is broad agreement that working memory is closely related to attention. This article delineates several theoretical options for conceptualizing this link, and evaluates their viability in light of their theoretical implications and the empirical support they received. The definitions reviewed by Cowan (2017) differ primarily in the substantive assumptions they include (e.g., whether or not WM consists of multiple storage modules, and to what extent it includes long-term memory) Beyond these differences in theoretical assumptions, there is a broad consensus on what the term working memory refers to: The mechanisms and processes that hold the mental representations currently most needed for an ongoing cognitive task available for processing. Executive attention is a term that is notoriously poorly defined (Jurado & Rosselli, 2007) It is used on the one hand to refer to attention directed to one’s own goals and (mental or overt) actions, including response selection (Szmalec, Vandierendonck, & Kemps, 2005), action planning, protecting the pursuit of our current goal from distractions and temptations, as well as switching from one task to another. One way to perhaps bring together the two meanings is by assuming that we attend to (i.e., select, assign resources to) our own goals
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