Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Binzmühlestrasse 14/22, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland.
Mem Cognit. 2020 Nov;48(8):1442-1459. doi: 10.3758/s13421-020-01062-0.
Refreshing - briefly attending to an item in working memory - has been proposed as a domain-general maintenance process. According to the time-based resource-sharing (TBRS) theory, people refresh the contents of working memory sequentially at high speed. We measured the speed of refreshing by asking participants to sequentially refresh a small set of items in sync with a metronome, and to adjust the metronome to the fastest speed at which they could refresh. Refreshing speeds converged on about 0.2 s per item for several verbal and visual materials. This time was shorter than the speed of articulatory rehearsal measured with the same method, and - in contrast to rehearsal - did not depend on word length. We sought evidence for people refreshing in sync with the metronome by presenting recognition probes at unpredictable times. We expected that probes matching the just-refreshed item should be recognized faster and more accurately than probes matching other items. This was not the case. A parallel experiment with overt articulatory rehearsal showed poor synchronization of rehearsal with the metronome, suggesting by analogy that refreshing was equally out of sync. The results support the assumption that people can attend sequentially to items in working memory, and monitor this process. This refreshing process is probably faster than rehearsal, but it is unlikely to be as fast as the refreshing process assumed in the TBRS theory.
刷新——简要关注工作记忆中的项目——被提议为一种通用的维持过程。根据基于时间的资源共享（TBRS）理论，人们以高速顺序刷新工作记忆的内容。我们通过要求参与者以与节拍器同步的方式顺序刷新一小部分项目，并将节拍器调整到他们能够刷新的最快速度，来测量刷新的速度。对于几种口头和视觉材料，刷新速度收敛到每个项目约 0.2 秒。这个时间比用相同方法测量的发音复述速度要短，并且与复述不同，它不依赖于单词长度。我们通过在不可预测的时间呈现识别探针来寻找与节拍器同步刷新的证据。我们预计，与刚刚刷新的项目匹配的探针应该比与其他项目匹配的探针更快、更准确地被识别。事实并非如此。与公开发音复述的平行实验表明，复述与节拍器的同步性很差，这表明类比地说，刷新同样不同步。结果支持人们可以按顺序关注工作记忆中的项目并监控此过程的假设。这个刷新过程可能比复述快，但不太可能像 TBRS 理论中假设的刷新过程那么快。
