Inhibition-of-return-like effects in working memory? A preregistered replication study of Johnson et al. (2013)

The present study concerns a preregistered replication of the study conducted by Johnson et al. (Johnson et al. 2013 Psychol. Sci. 24, 1104–1112 (doi:10.1177/0956797612466414)), in which they showed an inhibition-of-return-like effect in working memory. Inhibition of return is a well-known phenomenon observed in the field of perception and refers to the observation that it takes longer to look back at a location which has recently been explored than to look at an unexplored location. Working memory is a central concept in the field of cognitive psychology and refers to the capacity to process and maintain information simultaneously over short periods of time. Johnson's study applied the inhibition of return paradigm to the concept of working memory. Their results showed that it is harder to access a working memory representation that had just been thought of, i.e. refreshed, in comparison to an unrefreshed working memory representation. Contrary to this study of Johnson et al., who observed refreshing to result in inhibitory processes, most studies on refreshing have described its effect as increasing/prolonging the level of activation of the memory representations. In an attempt to integrate these opposite patterns produced by ‘refreshing’, we started by replicating one of the studies on the inhibition of return in working memory reported by Johnson et al.