The Relationship Between Task Relevance And The Interaction Of Storage And Processing In Working Memory

Working memory (WM) refers to a limited-capacity system responsible for the simultaneous storage and manipulation of information during the performance of cognitive tasks. The relationship between temporary storage and processing is one of the fundamental issues in the research of working memory. This research involves two experiments. Experiment 1 was designed to verify the influence of concurrent memory load on processing efficiency in task relevant condition and task irrelevant condition. In relevant condition, the processing task, which required subjects to complete a sequence of mental arithmetic operations, need to retrieve task relevant information from stored items; while in irrelevant condition, the processing task did not require the retrieval of items from working memory. There were three kinds of set size for memory load, 3, 4 and 6. The aim of Experiment 2 was to explore the influence of processing load on storage capacity in task relevant and irrelevant conditions. There were two processing loads, the addition or subtraction of two , three and four single-digit numbers. Participants of the two experiments were all volunteer undergraduates.Results of Experiment 1 showed that response time and accuracy of processing task were not impaired by memory load in task irrelevant condition; while in relevant condition, processing efficiency decreased significantly as the memory set size increased. In Experiment 2, the results indicated that processing loads, the storage performance showed significant difference between the two processing loadsimpaired storage capacity, but the storage capacity in relevant condition was inferior to that of irrelevant condition.According to the results above, it can be concluded that Resource models of working memory and the cross-talk account are apt for different conditions. The cross-talk account can be applied to interpret the phenomenon when memory task is storaged in the phonological loop, However resource theory can be applied to interpret the phenomenon when memory task is storaged in the region of direct access.