The Attention Type Influences The Decay In Working Memory: Specific Resource Competition Theory

Working memory(WM)is used for temporary storage and real-time operation with limited information.Numerous studies have found that the information stored in the WM is relatively unstable,often leading to oblivion.Currently,researchers have done a lot of discussion about the forgetting mechanism of WM,and proposed temporal decay theroy,representation-based interference theroy,and Temporal distinctiveness theory.However,these theories either ignore the role of attentional resources,or believe that the resources used for information processing in WM is general,and they do not take into account that the different types of memory information need different types of attention resources to be kept in WM.The controversy about WM forgotting mechanisms may be related to the ignorance of the type of attention resources.To this end,we propose a new theory for WM forgetting mechanism,namely Specific Resource Competition Theory(SRCT).SRCT suggests that the information kept in or forgetten from WM is affected by the competition for the same type of attention resource,which has been supported by many studies.Furthermore,SRCT first forecast that when the competitive second task ends,resources will be returned to the WM and the memory representation will recover.To test this hypothsis,in the current study,Participates were asked to remember the binding characters,color or spatial location information.The first two held in WM consume object-based attention,while the last one consumes space-based attention.This study inserted a concurrent object-feature report task,consuming object-based attention,or visual-search task,consuming space-based attention,during the maintenance phase of a WM task,and adjust the recovery time Systematically(100ms,500ms,900ms,1300ms,1700ms).By three parts researches,a total of six experiments,we found the following results:(1)when the memory task and second task jointly compete for the same type of attentional resources,after the second task,memory task memory performance recovery with the passage of time(experiment 1\3\5)(2)when the memory task and second task do not compete for the same type of attentional resources,after the second task,memory task memory performance will not recover with the passage of time(experiment 2\4\6)...