title: Using electrophysiology to demonstrate that cueing affects long-term memory storage over the short term.
abstract: As researchers who study working memory, we often assume that participants keep a representation of an object in working memory when we present a cue that indicates that the object will be tested in a couple of seconds. This intuitively accounts for how well people can remember a cued object, relative to their memory for that same object presented without a cue. However, it is possible that this superior memory does not purely reflect storage of the cued object in working memory. We tested the hypothesis that cues presented during a stream of objects, followed by a short retention interval and immediate memory test, can change how information is handled by long-term memory. We tested this hypothesis by using a family of frontal event-related potentials believed to reflect long-term memory storage. We found that these frontal indices of long-term memory were sensitive to the task relevance of objects signaled by auditory cues, even when the objects repeated frequently, such that proactive interference was high. Our findings indicate the problematic nature of assuming process purity in the study of working memory, and demonstrate that frequent stimulus repetitions fail to isolate the role of working memory mechanisms.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Manchester University, 604 E. College Avenue, North Manchester, IN, 46962, USA. AMMaxcey@manchester.edu.
authors.forename: Ashleigh M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Maxcey
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, and Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
authors.forename: Keisuke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fukuda
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, and Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
authors.forename: Won S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, and Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
authors.forename: Geoffrey F
authors.initials: GF
authors.lastname: Woodman
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D057567:Memory, Long-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011334:Proactive Inhibition; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Cognitive neuroscience; Cognitive neuroscience of memory; Cueing; Event-related potentials; Long-term memory; Object memory; Process purity; Working memory