Reactivated Visual Masks Do Not Disrupt Serial Recall

The process of spontaneous refreshing plays a central role in current models of working memory but is yet to be observed directly. In a recent study, Rey, Versace, and Plancher (2018) introduced a novel approach to investigate the mechanisms underlying refreshing: They presented tones previously associated with a visual mask during the free time of a complex span task and found that this impaired memory, presumably because reactivation of the masks disrupts refreshing. Here, we aimed to replicate their finding under more controlled settings with more observations per participant. We failed to replicate the previous findings, thereby questioning the robustness of the original effect.