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Working Memory Capacity as a Determinant of Proactive Interference and Auditory Distraction

Individual differences in working memory capacity are related to performance on a range of elemental and higher order cognitive tasks. The current experiment tests the assumptions of two theoretical approaches to working memory capacity: working memory as executive attention and working memory as te...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Tehan, Gerald, Arber, Madeleine, Tolan, Georgina Anne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Ubiquity Press 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6646941/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31517224
http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/joc.7
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author Tehan, Gerald
Arber, Madeleine
Tolan, Georgina Anne
author_facet Tehan, Gerald
Arber, Madeleine
Tolan, Georgina Anne
author_sort Tehan, Gerald
collection PubMed
description Individual differences in working memory capacity are related to performance on a range of elemental and higher order cognitive tasks. The current experiment tests the assumptions of two theoretical approaches to working memory capacity: working memory as executive attention and working memory as temporary binding. These approaches are examined using a short-term updating task where proactive interference is manipulated, such that old responses have to be suppressed in favour of new responses. A second source of distraction is introduced by way of irrelevant, to-be-ignored background speech that accompanies presentation of the list items. This speech reinforces either the to-be-remembered item on the current list, or the to-be-suppressed item. Working memory capacity was significantly related to overall level of correct performance on the short-term task, and to the degree of proactive interference experienced. However, there was no evidence for individual differences in the ability to suppress the interfering foil, nor in priming effects associated with the irrelevant speech. The results provided little support for the working memory capacity as executive attention perspective, some evidence for the binding perspective, but also evidence supporting the fact that some effects of distraction are not under voluntary control.
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spelling pubmed-66469412019-09-12 Working Memory Capacity as a Determinant of Proactive Interference and Auditory Distraction Tehan, Gerald Arber, Madeleine Tolan, Georgina Anne J Cogn Research Article Individual differences in working memory capacity are related to performance on a range of elemental and higher order cognitive tasks. The current experiment tests the assumptions of two theoretical approaches to working memory capacity: working memory as executive attention and working memory as temporary binding. These approaches are examined using a short-term updating task where proactive interference is manipulated, such that old responses have to be suppressed in favour of new responses. A second source of distraction is introduced by way of irrelevant, to-be-ignored background speech that accompanies presentation of the list items. This speech reinforces either the to-be-remembered item on the current list, or the to-be-suppressed item. Working memory capacity was significantly related to overall level of correct performance on the short-term task, and to the degree of proactive interference experienced. However, there was no evidence for individual differences in the ability to suppress the interfering foil, nor in priming effects associated with the irrelevant speech. The results provided little support for the working memory capacity as executive attention perspective, some evidence for the binding perspective, but also evidence supporting the fact that some effects of distraction are not under voluntary control. Ubiquity Press 2018-01-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6646941/ /pubmed/31517224 http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/joc.7 Text en Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Research Article
Tehan, Gerald
Arber, Madeleine
Tolan, Georgina Anne
Working Memory Capacity as a Determinant of Proactive Interference and Auditory Distraction
title Working Memory Capacity as a Determinant of Proactive Interference and Auditory Distraction
title_full Working Memory Capacity as a Determinant of Proactive Interference and Auditory Distraction
title_fullStr Working Memory Capacity as a Determinant of Proactive Interference and Auditory Distraction
title_full_unstemmed Working Memory Capacity as a Determinant of Proactive Interference and Auditory Distraction
title_short Working Memory Capacity as a Determinant of Proactive Interference and Auditory Distraction
title_sort working memory capacity as a determinant of proactive interference and auditory distraction
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6646941/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31517224
http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/joc.7
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