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Working Memory Training for Older Participants: A Control Group Training Regimen and Initial Intellectual Functioning Assessment
Published on: September 20, 2020
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Getting value out of working memory through strategic prioritisation: Implications for storage and control
Richard J Allen1, Amy L Atkinson2, Graham J Hitch3
1School of Psychology, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006)
|May 21, 2024
Summary
High-value items receive prioritized attention in working memory, enhancing recall without affecting overall task performance. This value-directed prioritization is strategic and effortful, influencing encoding, maintenance, and retrieval processes.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Human Memory Research
Background:
- Working memory is crucial for cognition but has limited capacity.
- Attention significantly influences working memory performance.
- Prioritizing high-value information is a key cognitive strategy.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review research on value-directed prioritization in working memory over the last decade.
- To examine how selective attention impacts the prioritization of high-value items.
- To discuss the implications for working memory, attention, and strategic control.
Main Methods:
- Review of visual working memory paradigms, primarily with young adults.
- Analysis of studies investigating the effects of item value on memory performance.
- Discussion of findings across different task domains and populations.
Main Results:
- Items assigned higher value are remembered better.
- Overall task performance remains unchanged.
- A recency advantage exists for sequentially presented items, irrespective of value.
Conclusions:
- Value-directed prioritization is an effortful, top-down controlled process.
- It influences encoding, maintenance, and retrieval stages of working memory.
- Further research is needed to map contextual influences on this strategic control.
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