Abstract
Updating refers to (1) discarding items from, (2) repositioning items in, and (3) adding items to a running working memory span. Our behavioral and fMRI experiments varied three factors: trial length, proactive interference (PI), and group integrity. Group integrity reflected whether the grou** of items at the encoding stage was violated at discarding. Behavioral results were consistent with the idea that updating processes have a relatively short refractory period and may not fatigue, and they revealed that episodic information about group context is encoded automatically in working memory stimulus representations. The fMRI results did not show evidence that updating requirements in a task recruit executive control processes other than those supporting performance on nonupdating trials. They did reveal an item-accumulation effect, in which signal increased monotonically with the number of items presented during the trial, despite the insensitivity of behavioral measures to this factor. Behavioral and fMRI correlates of PI extended previous results and rejected an alternative explanation of PI effects in working memory.
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This research was supported by the American Federation for Aging Research and by NIH Grants NS01762 and AG13483. B.R.P. received support from NIH Grant AG00255 to VirginiaM.-Y. Lee (University of Pennsylvania).
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Postle, B.R., Berger, J.S., Goldstein, J.H. et al. Behavioral and neurophysiological correlates of episodic coding, proactive interference, and list length effects in a running span verbal working memory task. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 1, 10–21 (2001). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.1.1.10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.1.1.10