Abstract
The long-term fate of to-be-remembered information depends in part on the conditions of initial learning, including mental operations engaged via working memory. However, the mechanistic role of working memory (WM) processes in subsequent episodic memory (EM) remains unclear. Does re-exposure to word-pairs during WM recognition testing improve EM for those associations? Are benefits from WM re-exposure greater after an opportunity for retrieval practice compared to mere re-exposure to the memoranda? These questions are addressed in three experiments (N = 460) designed to assess whether WM-based recognition testing benefits long-term associative memory relative to WM-based restudying. Our results show null or negative benefits of WM recognition testing minutes later when initial WM accuracy was not considered. An EM benefit of WM recognition testing only emerges when the analyses are limited to pairs responded to correctly during WM. However, even when compared with accurate WM recognition, restudying can lead to similar associative EM benefits in specific experimental conditions. Taken together, the present results suggest that while WM re-exposure to studied pairs is beneficial to long-term associative memory, successful retrieval on initial tests may be a necessary but insufficient condition for the emergence of a “WM-based testing effect.” We consider these results in relation to several hypotheses proposed to explain the testing effect in long-term memory (LTM). In view of empirical parallels with the LTM testing effect, we propose that similar processes influence the benefits of practice tests administered within the canonical boundaries of WM, suggesting continuities in memory over the short and long term.
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Notes
An a priori Bayesian precision analysis indicated that a sample of 50 participants per group was sensitive to detect a reliable difference between parameters (Kruschke & Liddell, 2018). We oversampled based on pilot work indicating the variability in quality of the data collected from undergraduates online during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Because these encoding duration conditions were run consecutively, participants were not randomly assigned in this experiment; random assignment was used in Experiments 2 and 3.
For the first subset of participants, encoding duration was set at 710 ms, which was the average study time for young adults in Bartsch et al. (2019). For the second subset of participants, encoding duration was increased to 900 ms as an attempt to increase immediate recognition performance while kee** the duration of the WM–encoding cycle within the boundary of WM.
Relatively few inaccurate WM-Restudy trials (5% error rate) compared to inaccurate WM-Choice (39% error rate) precludes directly incorporating WM Accuracy (correct vs. incorrect) as an interaction term in the analysis.
These analyses were collapsed across encoding duration to simplify the analyses. In the initial analyses on WM accuracy (see Experiment 1 Results: Paired-associates accuracy), we found no effect of encoding duration on WM accuracy.
To reduce WM set size, we opted to remove the encoded-only pairs because of consistently low EM accuracy and the lack of additional information to be gained from this condition.
We thank the reviewers for referring us to these frameworks for consideration.
Desirable difficulty could also play a role in magnitude differences in the test-restudy comparisons across encoding-duration groups. It stands to reason that having less time to study the pair during encoding leads to more effortful processing during choice recognition. But again, it is unclear from our results why desirable difficulty would affect some re-exposure conditions but not others.
Given that correct responses on WM-Choice trials required associative recognition whereas the WM-Restudy simply required finding the word among non-words, accurate WM responses should benefit EM to a larger degree for the WM-Choice pairs relative to the WM-Restudy pairs. This claim is supported by a logistic regression analysis, reported in the Online Supplemental Materials.
Indeed, an analysis relating errors made during WM and responses made during EM demonstrated that erroneously selecting the lure during the WM-Choice increased number of lure response was made during EM. See Online Supplemental Materials for more details
We thank one of the reviewers for bringing up this point.
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**e, K.Y., Reuter-Lorenz, P.A. The impact of working memory testing on long-term associative memory. Mem Cogn (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01568-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01568-x