Kessler Yoav, Rozanis Maayan
Department of Psychology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 8410501, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2023 Apr;30(2):643-651. doi: 10.3758/s13423-022-02186-x. Epub 2022 Sep 22.
Goal-directed behavior requires maintaining the relevant goal in working memory (WM) and using it to guide behavior. The contents of WM should be regulated, so only relevant goals, but not irrelevant ones, are maintained. Computational models suggest that a gate, which is closed by default, separates WM from perceptual input. Transient opening of the gate enables WM updating. Indeed, previous studies show that updating WM with relevant information is controlled, effortful, and slow. In contrast to the above, here we show that WM updating with goal information is faster and more accurate than not updating. A multiple-cue task-switching paradigm is introduced. Participants were presented with a sequence of task cues, followed by a single probe. They needed to respond to each cue using its corresponding key. The cues were presented in red or blue. When the probe appeared, participants had to judge it using the task cued by the most recent red (but not blue) cue. Accordingly, they had to update their WM when the cue appeared in red, but not when it was blue (the color mapping was counterbalanced in Experiment 2). In two experiments, we show that performance in update trials was faster and more accurate than in no-update trials, suggesting that updating, rather than not-updating, is the default mode of operation.
目标导向行为需要在工作记忆（WM）中维持相关目标，并利用该目标来指导行为。工作记忆的内容应受到调控，以便仅维持相关目标，而非无关目标。计算模型表明，一个默认关闭的门控将工作记忆与感知输入分隔开来。门控的短暂打开能使工作记忆得到更新。的确，先前的研究表明，用相关信息更新工作记忆是受控制的、费力的且缓慢的。与上述情况相反，我们在此表明，用目标信息更新工作记忆比不更新更快且更准确。我们引入了一种多线索任务切换范式。向参与者呈现一系列任务线索，随后是单个探测刺激。他们需要使用相应的按键对每个线索做出反应。线索以红色或蓝色呈现。当探测刺激出现时，参与者必须根据最近出现的红色（而非蓝色）线索所提示的任务对其进行判断。因此，当线索以红色出现时，他们必须更新其工作记忆，而当线索为蓝色时则无需更新（在实验2中颜色映射是平衡的）。在两项实验中，我们表明更新试验中的表现比不更新试验更快且更准确，这表明更新而非不更新是默认的操作模式。
