Kessler Yoav
Department of Psychology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel.
Front Psychol. 2017 Dec 21;8:2260. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02260. eCollection 2017.
Models of working memory (WM) suggest that the contents of WM are separated from perceptual input by a gate, that enables shielding information against interference when closed, and allows for rapid updating when open. Recent work in the declarative WM domain provided evidence for this notion, demonstrating the behavioral cost of opening and closing the gate. The goal of the present work was to examine gating in procedural WM, namely in a task-switching experiment. In each trial, participants were presented with a digit and a task cue, indicating whether the required task was a parity or a magnitude decision. Critically, a colored frame around the stimulus indicated whether the task cue was relevant (attend trials), or whether it had to be ignored, and the previous task set should be applied regardless of the present cue (ignore trials). Switching between tasks, and between ignore and attend trials, was manipulated. The results of two experiments demonstrated that the cost of gate opening was eliminated in task switching trials, implying that both processes operate in parallel.
工作记忆（WM）模型表明，工作记忆的内容通过一道门与感知输入相分离，这道门在关闭时能够屏蔽信息免受干扰，在打开时则允许快速更新。陈述性工作记忆领域的近期研究为这一观点提供了证据，证明了打开和关闭这道门的行为代价。本研究的目的是检验程序性工作记忆中的门控，即在一项任务切换实验中进行检验。在每次试验中，向参与者呈现一个数字和一个任务线索，指示所需任务是奇偶判断还是大小判断。关键在于，刺激周围的彩色框架表明任务线索是否相关（关注试验），或者是否必须忽略它，并且无论当前线索如何都应应用先前的任务集（忽略试验）。对任务之间以及忽略试验和关注试验之间的切换进行了操控。两项实验的结果表明，在任务切换试验中消除了开门的代价，这意味着这两个过程是并行运行的。
