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Working memory representations persist in the face of unexpected task alterations
Garrett Swan1, Brad Wyble1, Hui Chen2
1Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA.
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics
|April 8, 2017
Summary
Stored memory information persists even when faced with unexpected tasks. This suggests that memory failures in experiments are due to encoding limitations, not task-switching effects.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Memory Research
Background:
- Information can be retained in memory during concurrent tasks.
- The fate of stored information during unexpected task shifts, common in inattentional and change blindness studies, remains unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether unexpected task context shifts clear memory representations.
- To determine if memory overwriting occurs due to surprise questions in experimental settings.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments were conducted with participants performing visual search tasks.
- Task attributes (identity or color) were either kept consistent or switched for a surprise trial.
- Participants encountered unexpected instructions and had to respond differently on the surprise trial.
Main Results:
- Accuracy on the surprise trial was higher when the reported attribute remained the same compared to when it switched.
- Reaction times on the surprise trial did not differ between the same-attribute and different-attribute groups.
- These findings indicate that expected information survives unexpected task demands.
Conclusions:
- Failures to report information in surprise trials likely reflect memory encoding limitations, not forgetting induced by task switching.
- Stored memory representations are resilient to unexpected task context changes.
- This has implications for interpreting results in inattentional and change blindness research.