Mj. Kane et Rw. Engle, Working-memory capacity, proactive interference, and divided attention: Limits on long-term memory retrieval, J EXP PSY L, 26(2), 2000, pp. 336-358
Citations number
95
Categorie Soggetti
Psycology
Journal title
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-LEARNING MEMORY AND COGNITION
Two experiments examined how individual differences in working-memory capac
ity (WM) relate to proactive interference (PI) susceptibility. We tested hi
gh and low WM-span participants in a PI-buildup task under single-task or d
ual-task ("load") conditions. In Experiment 1, a finger-tapping task was im
posed during encoding and retrieval of each list; in Experiment 2, tapping
was required during encoding or retrieval. In both experiments, low spans s
howed greater PI than did high spans under no load, but groups showed equiv
alent PI under divided attention. Load increased PI only for high spans, su
ggesting they use attention at encoding and retrieval to combat PI. In Expe
riment 2, only low spans showed a dual-task cost on List 1 memory, before P
I built up. Results indicate a role for attentional processing, perhaps inh
ibitory in nature, at encoding and retrieval, and are discussed with respec
t to theories of WM and prefrontal cortex function.