title: Effects of proactive interference on non-verbal working memory.
abstract: Working memory (WM) is a cognitive system responsible for actively maintaining and processing relevant information and is central to successful cognition. A process critical to WM is the resolution of proactive interference (PI), which involves suppressing memory intrusions from prior memories that are no longer relevant. Most studies that have examined resistance to PI in a process-pure fashion used verbal material. By contrast, studies using non-verbal material are scarce, and it remains unclear whether the effect of PI is domain-general or whether it applies solely to the verbal domain. The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of PI in visual WM using both objects with high and low nameability. Using a Directed-Forgetting paradigm, we varied discriminability between WM items on two dimensions, one verbal (high-nameability vs. low-nameability objects) and one perceptual (colored vs. gray objects). As in previous studies using verbal material, effects of PI were found with object stimuli, even after controlling for verbal labels being used (i.e., low-nameability condition). We also found that the addition of distinctive features (color, verbal label) increased performance in rejecting intrusion probes, most likely through an increase in discriminability between content-context bindings in WM.
authors.affiliation: Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, New York State Psychiatric Institute, 1051 Riverside Dr, New York, NY, 10032, USA. cyrmari@nyspi.columbia.edu.
authors.forename: Marilyn
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1605-0427
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cyr
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.
authors.forename: Derek E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Nee
authors.affiliation: Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, New York State Psychiatric Institute, 1051 Riverside Dr, New York, NY, 10032, USA.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Nelson
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: Thea
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Senger
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jonides
authors.affiliation: Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, New York State Psychiatric Institute, 1051 Riverside Dr, New York, NY, 10032, USA.|Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Chara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Malapani
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D011334:Proactive Inhibition; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology
keywords: Directed forgetting; Interference/inhibition in memory retrieval; Object recognition; Recollection; Working memory