Interference In Working Memory Research Articles

The role of culture and semantic organization in working memory updating

ABSTRACT Westerners tend to relate items in a categorical manner, whereas Easterners focus more on functional relationships. The present study extended research on semantic organization in long-term memory to working memory. First, Americans’ and Turks’ preferences for categorical versus functional relationships were tested. Second, working memory interference was assessed using a 2-back working memory paradigm in which lure items were categorically and functionally related to targets. Next, a mediation model tested direct effects of culture and semantic organization on working memory task behaviour, and the indirect effect, whether semantic organization mediated the relationship between culture and working memory interference. Whereas Americans had slower response times to correctly rejecting functional lures compared to categorical lures, conditions did not differ for Turks. However, semantic organization did not mediate cultural difference in working memory interference. Across cultures, there was evidence that semantic organization affected working memory errors, with individuals who endorsed categorical more than functional pairings committing more categorical than functional errors on the 2-back task. Results align with prior research suggesting individual differences in use of different types of semantic relationships, and further that literature by indicating effects on interference in working memory. However, these individual differences may not be culture-dependent.

Hippocampal subfield volumes contribute to working memory interference control in aging: Evidence from longitudinal associations over 5 years

In memory, familiar but no longer relevant information may disrupt encoding and retrieval of to-be-learned information. While it has been demonstrated that the ability to resolve proactive interference (PI) in working memory (WM) is reduced in aging, the neuroanatomical components of this decline have yet to be determined. Hippocampal (HC) involvement in age-related decline in control of PI is currently not known. In particular, the association between HC subfield volumes and control of PI in WM has not been examined previously. Here we investigate the associations between mean level and 5-year trajectories of gray matter subfield volumes and PI in WM across the adult life span (N = 157). Longitudinal analyses over 5-years across all participants revealed that reduced volume in the subiculum was related to impaired control of PI. Age-stratified analyses showed that this association was most pronounced in older adults. Furthermore, we found that in older adults the effect of age on PI was mediated by GM volume in the HC. The current results show that HC volume is associated with the ability to control PI in WM, and that these associations are modulated by age.

Attentional selection is a sufficient cause for visual working memory interference.

Visual attention and visual working memory (VWM) are intertwined processes that allow navigation of the visual world. These systems can compete for highly limited cognitive resources, creating interference effects when both operate in tandem. Performing an attentional task while maintaining a VWM load often leads to a loss of memory information. These losses are seen even with very simple visual search tasks. Previous research has argued that this may be due to the attentional selection process, of choosing the target item out of surrounding nontarget items. Over two experiments, the current study disentangles the roles of search and selection in visual search and their influence on a retained VWM load. Experiment 1 revealed that, when search stimuli were relatively simple, target-absent searches (which did not require attentional selection) did not provoke memory interference, whereas target-present search did. In Experiment 2, the number of potential targets was varied in the search displays. In one condition, participants were required to select any one of the items displayed, requiring an attentional selection but no need to search for a specific item. Importantly, this condition led to memory interference to the same extent as a condition where a single target was presented among nontargets. Together, these results show that the process of attentional selection is a sufficient cause for interference with a concurrently maintained VWM load.

Effects of temporal order and relative location on distractor interference in visual working memory

Effects of temporal order and relative location on distractor interference in visual working memory

Inter-item interference in visual working memory occurs jointly in feature-specific and feature-general codes

Inter-item interference in visual working memory occurs jointly in feature-specific and feature-general codes

Meaningful stimuli inflate the role of proactive interference in visual working memory.

The use of meaningful daily objects in visual working memory (VWM) tasks revealed two uncharacteristic findings: enlarged memory capacity, and strong proactive interference (PI), which was previously believed to play only a modest role in VWM. To disassociate the roles of meaning and visual complexity in these effects, a set of stimuli composed of meaningful daily objects was compared to visually similar meaningless sets. These sets were included in a Repeated (PI-prone) condition in which stimuli were repeatedly drawn from a limited set of items, and in a Unique (PI-free) condition in which each stimulus appeared only once. In line with past findings, the results consistently showed superior memory for meaningful stimuli. Importantly, they also showed a stronger PI-effect for meaningful stimuli as the difference between the Repeated and Unique conditions was greatly reduced (Experiment 1) or eliminated (Experiment 2) for meaningless stimuli. Together, these results strongly imply that meaning, and not visual complexity, plays a key role not only in boosting memory capacity but also in inflating the role of PI in VWM.

Magnitude and sources of proactive interference in visual memory

ABSTRACT Proactive interference – the disruptive effect of old memories on new learning – is a long-established forgetting mechanism, yet there are doubts about its impact on visual working memory and uncertainty about the kinds of information that cause proactive interference. The present study aimed to assess these issues in three experiments using a modified recent probes task. Participants encoded four target images on each trial and determined whether a probe matched one of those targets. In Experiment 1, probes matching targets from trial N-1 or N-3 damaged responding in relation to a novel probe. Proactive interference was also produced by probes differing in state to a previously experienced target. This was further assessed in Experiments 2 and 3. Here, probes differing in colour to a previous target, or matching the general target category only, produced little proactive interference. Conversely, probes directly matching a prior target, or differing in state information, hindered task performance. This study found robust proactive interference in visual working memory that could endure over multiple trials, but it was also produced by stimuli closely resembling an old target. This challenges the notion that proactive interference is produced by an exact representation of a previously encoded image.

Visuospatial working memory abilities and spontaneous sensations perception

Aim: Body awareness arises when attending to and maintaining awareness of visuospatial body representations. By the same token, focussing on representations transfers them to working memory. Body awareness and working memory seemingly rely on similar processes and recruit common parietal areas involved in perception. Therefore, we asked whether visuospatial working memory abilities would define individual differences in the perception of spontaneous sensations (SPS), i.e., bodily sensations perceived in the absence of triggers (e.g., tactile stimulation or movement), when attending to the body. Method: Participants completed two visuospatial working memory tasks to assess various mechanisms: (i) the decay of representations was assessed through a Brown-Peterson task in which the delay between the memorandum presentation and its recall was manipulated, and (ii) the impact of distractors’ interference and cognitive load (i.e., complexity) on recall performances were assessed through a complex span task that required the processing of distractors while maintaining a memorandum. A standard SPS task involving localization and characterization of SPS perceived on the hands was completed afterwards. Results: Low performance due to decay, distractors’ interference and cognitive load in visuospatial working memory was associated with a decrease in the frequency of SPS. Additionally, low performance due to distractors’ cognitive load predicted a decrease in the perception of surface-type sensations, and high performance despite distractors’ interference led to a better perception of SPS on less sensitive areas of the hand. Conclusion: We discuss how visuospatial working memory processes might contribute to body awareness and perceptual distortions of the body.

The locus of proactive interference in visual working memory.

Recent studies showed that proactive interference (PI) impairs visual working memory (WM), as performance is better when the memory items are unique rather than repeated throughout the experiment. To scrutinize the mechanisms driving this effect, we tested how it affects the stages of encoding, retention, and testing. Experiment 1 instructed participants to make speeded responses and found that reaction time was slower in the repeated than in the unique condition, suggesting memory source confusion during testing. Experiment 2 showed that a retention interval manipulation did not affect the magnitude of the PI effect. Finally, Experiment 3 found that the PI effect did not increase when the encoding interval was short. Instead, the difference between the repeated and unique conditions was reduced, probably because the increased familiarity with the memory items in the repeated condition facilitated consolidation. Taken together, these results suggest that the main locus of PI in visual WM is during testing and that encoding and retaining information in visual WM are hardly affected by no longer needed information. Consequently, these data support the involvement of long-term memory in the effect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Reducing Interference and Improving Verbal and Visual Working Memory in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

AbstractIntroduction: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a disease possibly leading to increased interference and difficulty in verbal and visual working memory. The present research attempted to investigate whether Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) would affect interference as well as the verbal and visual working memory of MS patients.Method: This study was a quasi-experimental research with a pretest-posttest and a control group. The statistical population included all the MS patients referring to Ahvaz MS Society in 2019 A total of 30 patients were selected through purposive sampling and were randomly divided into experimental and control groups (each containing 15 individuals). The subjects were then examined using the Stroop Test and Wechsler Memory Scale-III. The data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance.Results: The results showed a significant difference between the two groups in terms of interference (F= 7.48, P≤ 0.01), verbal working memory (F= 24.69, P≤ 0.001), and visual working memory (F= 22.82, P≤ 0.001).Conclusion: This study highlighted how effective ACT was on interference and working memory of MS patients. Thus, clinical MS specialists can use this treatment for their patients to optimize care.

Music is similar to language in terms of working memory interference.

Some researchers theorize that musicians’ greater language ability is mediated by greater working memory because music and language share the same processing resources. Prior work using working memory sentence processing dual-task paradigms have shown that holding verbal information (e.g., words) in working memory interferes with sentence processing. In contrast, visuospatial stimuli are processed in a different working memory store and should not interfere with sentence processing. We tested whether music showed similar interference to sentence processing as opposed to noninterference like visuospatial stimuli. We also compared musicians to nonmusicians to investigate whether musical training improves verbal working memory. Findings revealed that musical stimuli produced similar working memory interference as linguistic stimuli, but visuospatial stimuli did not—suggesting that music and language rely on similar working memory resources (i.e., verbal skills) that are distinct from visuospatial skills. Musicians performed more accurately on the working memory tasks, particularly for the verbal and musical working memory stimuli, supporting an association between musicianship and greater verbal working memory capacity. Future research is necessary to evaluate the role of music training as a cognitive intervention or educational strategy to enhance reading fluency.

Proactive interference in working memory is related to adult age and cognitive factors: cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence from the Betula study

ABSTRACT In working memory (WM), successful maintenance of information is affected by interference. Older adults may be especially susceptible to the effects of interference, which may cause age-related cognitive impairments. A relative score of IC was derived from cross-sectional (n = 869) and longitudinal (n = 443) data to investigate (1) if IC is reduced in normal aging, (2) if individual differences in IC related to individual performance in other cognitive domains, and (3) if 5-year change in IC is related to change in general cognition. Older age was associated with reduced IC, but no decline in IC occurred over 5 years. Also, the ability to control interference in WM was related to performance in episodic memory, verbal fluency, and block design. We also found that IC mediates the relationship between age and cognition, suggesting that age-related cognitive decline is linked to IC. Finally, we demonstrate that change in IC was related to decline in episodic memory.

The impact of concurrent linguistic tasks on participants’ identification of spearcons

Spearcons (time-compressed speech) may be a viable auditory display for patient monitoring; however, the impact of concurrent linguistic tasks remains unexamined. We tested whether different concurrent linguistic tasks worsen participants' identification of spearcons. Experiment 1 tested non-clinician participants' identification of multiple-patient spearcons representing 2 vital signs of 5 patients while participants performed no concurrent task, reading, or saying linguistic tasks. Experiment 2 tested non-clinician participants' identification of 48 single-patient spearcons while they performed no concurrent task, reading, listening, and saying linguistic tasks. In Experiment 1 the saying task worsened participants' identification of spearcons compared with no concurrent task or reading. In Experiment 2, the saying and listening tasks reduced participants' accuracy at identifying spearcons, but the reading task did not. Listening affected identification accuracy no differently than the saying task did. Concurrent auditory linguistic tasks worsen participants’ identification of spearcons, probably due to auditory modality interference in verbal working memory.

Women's stereotype threat-based performance motivation and prepotent inhibitory ability.

According to the mere effort account of performance, stereotype threat motivates disproval of the negative performance stereotype, which in turn potentiates the overproduction of prepotent responses. In mathematics (maths), prepotent responding facilitates solve type question (e.g., equations) performance, but reduces comparison type question (e.g., estimations) performance. Problematically, the mere effort account indexes performance motivation as task performance. Also, this account posits that performance reduction on non-prepotent tasks derives from the overproduction of prepotent responses, as opposed to failed inhibition of prepotent responses associated with the alternative, namely, the working memory interference perspective. We investigated motivational and prepotent responding as applied to stereotype threat. In Experiment 1, a maths question selection task indexed motivation (independently of performance). Stereotype threat led female test takers to select more solve than comparison maths questions, in accord with the mere effort account. In Experiment 2, higher inhibitory ability protected overall maths performance following stereotype threat, but it did not protect non-prepotentiated comparison question performance (inconsistent with the working memory interference perspective). The results support the mere effort account.

Stereotype threat may not impact women's inhibitory control or mathematical performance: Providing support for the null hypothesis

AbstractUnderpinned by the findings of Jamieson and Harkins (2007; Experiment 3), the current study pits the mere effort motivational account of stereotype threat against a working memory interference account. In Experiment 1, females were primed with a negative self‐ or group stereotype pertaining to their visuospatial ability and completed an anti‐saccade eye‐tracking task. In Experiment 2 they were primed with a negative or positive group stereotype and completed an anti‐saccade and mental arithmetic task. Findings indicate that stereotype threat did not significantly impair women's inhibitory control (Experiments 1 and 2) or mathematical performance (Experiment 2), with Bayesian analyses providing support for the null hypothesis. These findings are discussed in relation to potential moderating factors of stereotype threat, such as task difficulty and stereotype endorsement, as well as the possibility that effect sizes reported in the stereotype threat literature are inflated due to publication bias.

The Tortoise and the Hare: Interactions between Reinforcement Learning and Working Memory.

Learning to make rewarding choices in response to stimuli depends on a slow but steady process, reinforcement learning, and a fast and flexible, but capacity-limited process, working memory. Using both systems in parallel, with their contributions weighted based on performance, should allow us to leverage the best of each system: rapid early learning, supplemented by long-term robust acquisition. However, this assumes that using one process does not interfere with the other. We use computational modeling to investigate the interactions between the two processes in a behavioral experiment and show that working memory interferes with reinforcement learning. Previous research showed that neural representations of reward prediction errors, a key marker of reinforcement learning, were blunted when working memory was used for learning. We thus predicted that arbitrating in favor of working memory to learn faster in simple problems would weaken the reinforcement learning process. We tested this by measuring performance in a delayed testing phase where the use of working memory was impossible, and thus participant choices depended on reinforcement learning. Counterintuitively, but confirming our predictions, we observed that associations learned most easily were retained worse than associations learned slower: Using working memory to learn quickly came at the cost of long-term retention. Computational modeling confirmed that this could only be accounted for by working memory interference in reinforcement learning computations. These results further our understanding of how multiple systems contribute in parallel to human learning and may have important applications for education and computational psychiatry.

Item-specific proactive interference in olfactory working memory

ABSTRACTWe examine item-specific olfactory proactive interference (PI) effects and undertake comparisons with verbal and non-verbal visual stimuli. Using a sequential recent-probes task, we show no evidence for PI with hard-to-name odours (Experiment 1). However, verbalisable odours do exhibit PI effects (Experiment 2). These findings occur despite above chance performance and similar serial position functions across both tasks. Experiments 3 and 4 apply words and faces, respectively, to our modified procedure, and show that methodological differences cannot explain the null finding in Experiment 1. The extent to which odours exhibit analogous PI effects to that of other modalities is, we argue, contingent on the characteristics of the odours employed.

Working memory strategies during rational number magnitude processing.

Rational number understanding is a critical building block for success in more advanced mathematics; however, how rational number magnitudes are conceptualized is not fully understood. In the current study, we used a dual-task working memory (WM) interference paradigm to investigate the dominant type of strategy (i.e., requiring verbal WM resources vs. requiring primarily visuospatial WM resources) used by adults when processing rational number magnitudes presented in both decimal and fraction notation. Analyses revealed no significant differences in involvement of verbal and visuospatial WM, regardless of notation (fractions vs. decimals), indicating that adults rely upon a mix of strategies and WM resources when processing rational number magnitudes. However, this pattern interacted with algebra ability such that those performing better on the algebra assessment relied upon both verbal and visuospatial WM when engaging in rational number comparisons, whereas rational number performance by adults with low algebra fluency was affected only by a simultaneous verbal WM task. Together, results support previous work implicating the involvement of WM resources in rational number processing and is the first study to indicate that the involvement of both verbal and visuospatial WM, as opposed to relying primarily on verbal WM, when processing rational number magnitudes may be indicative of higher mathematical proficiency in the domain of algebra. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

Release from proactive interference in rat spatial working memory.

A three-phase procedure was used to produce proactive interference (PI) in one trial on an eight-arm radial maze. Rats were forced to enter four arms for reward on an initial interference phase, to then enter the four remaining arms on a target phase, and to then choose among all eight arms on a retention test, with only the arms not visited in the target phase containing reward. Control trials involved only the target phase and the retention test. Lower accuracy was found on PI trials than on control trials, but performance on PI trials significantly exceeded chance, showing some retention of target memories. Changes in temporal and reward variables between the interference, target, and retention test phases showed release from PI, but changes in context and pattern of arm entry did not. It is suggested that the release from PI paradigm can be used to understand spatial memory encoding in rats and other species.

Subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation affects distractor interference in auditory working memory

Computational and theoretical accounts hypothesize the basal ganglia play a supramodal “gating” role in the maintenance of working memory representations, especially in preservation from distractor interference. There are currently two major limitations to this account. The first is that supporting experiments have focused exclusively on the visuospatial domain, leaving questions as to whether such “gating” is domain-specific. The second is that current evidence relies on correlational measures, as it is extremely difficult to causally and reversibly manipulate subcortical structures in humans. To address these shortcomings, we examined non-spatial, auditory working memory performance during reversible modulation of the basal ganglia, an approach afforded by deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus. We found that subthalamic nucleus stimulation impaired auditory working memory performance, specifically in the group tested in the presence of distractors, even though the distractors were predictable and completely irrelevant to the encoding of the task stimuli. This study provides key causal evidence that the basal ganglia act as a supramodal filter in working memory processes, further adding to our growing understanding of their role in cognition.