What do people typically do between list items? The nature of attention-based mnemonic activities depends on task context

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition
Evie VergauweNelson Cowan

Abstract

It is commonly assumed that attention-demanding postencoding processes take place during the free time immediately following encoding of each memory item in a list. These processes are thought to prevent loss of information from working memory (WM). We tested whether interitem pauses during presentation of a list are used to focus attention (a) on the last-presented memory item or (b) on all items currently in WM, and (c) whether this changes over time. Here, we presented black probe letters between to-be-remembered red letters. Participants judged whether each probe letter corresponded to the last-presented memory item (last-item match group) or to any of the memory items presented up to that point in the list (any-item match group). To examine mnemonic processing as a function of time, the delay between the to-be-remembered letter and the following probe was manipulated in three experiments. When preprobe delays and interitem intervals were relatively short (Experiment 1), recall performance was observed to be better in the last-item match group and this did not change as a function of the duration of the delay before the probe. When preprobe delays and interitem intervals were longer however (Experiment 2), this disruptive e...Continue Reading

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