Abstract
The current study is inspired by recent findings, which suggest that conflict is involved in the updating of memory representations. It directly addresses the relation between memory updating and conflict resolution by means of the one-back choice reaction time (RT) task, an updating task, which requires participants to postpone their response to stimulus n until the subsequent stimulus n + 1 has been presented. In three experiments, a more detailed analysis of the one-back choice RT task is presented in order to further identify the role of conflict resolution in memory updating. The findings demonstrate that the one-back choice RT task, which allows motor preparation just like a simple RT task, is in fact performed slower than a simple RT task because it additionally involves conflict resolution. It is further shown that also the response–stimulus interval of the one-back task involves processes that affect the amount of conflict in the task. In the "General discussion", the theoretical relevance of these findings for the concept of updating is discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Note that we prefer the term conflict resolution over interference because it offers a broader and, as we will argue further, more appropriate description of the processes involved in updating
References
Baddeley, A. (1986). Working memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press.
Baddeley, A. (1996). Exploring the central executive. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49, 5–28.
Baddeley, A., & Hitch, G. (1974). Working memory, In G. A. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 8, pp. 47–89). New York: Academic Press.
Botvinick, M., Braver, T., Barch, D., Carter, C., & Cohen, J. (2001). Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. Psychological Review, 108, 625–652.
Braver, T., Gray, J., & Burgess, G. (2007). Explaining the many varieties of working memory variation: Dual mechanisms of cognitive control. In Conway, A., Jarrold, C., Kane, M., Miyake, A., & Towse, J. (Eds.) Variation in working memory. Oxford: University Press.
Bunting, M., Cowan, N., & Saults, J. S. (2006). How does running memory span work? The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 1691–1700.
Chambers, C. D., Bellgrove, M. A., Gould, I. C., English, T., Garavan, H., McNaught, E., et al. (2007). Dissociable mechanisms of cognitive control in prefrontal and premotor cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology, 98, 3638–3647.
Deschuyteneer, M., Vandierendonck, A., & Muyllaert, I. (2006). Does solution of mental arithmetic problems such as 2 + 6 and 3 × 8 rely on the process of “memory updating”? Experimental Psychology, 53, 298–208.
Donders, F. C. (1868). La vitesse des actes psychiques [On the speed of mental processes]. Archives Néerlandaises, 3, 269–317.
Engle, R. W., Kane, M. J., & Tuholski, S. W. (1999). Individual differences in working memory capacity, what they tell us about controlled attention, general fluid intelligence and functions of the prefrontal cortex. In Miyake, A., & Shah, P. (Eds.) Models of working memory: Mechanisms of active maintenance and executive control. London:Cambridge Press.
Friedman, N., & Miyake, A. (2004). The relations among inhibition and interference control functions: A latent variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 101–135.
Gratton, G., Coles, M., & Donchin, E. (1992). Optimizing the use of information: Strategic control of activation and responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 4, 480–506.
Hegarty, M., Shah, P., & Miyake, A. (2000). Constraints on using the dual-task methodology to specify the degree of central executive involvement in cognitive tasks. Memory and Cognition, 28(3), 376–385.
Hommel, B. (1998). Event files: Evidence for automatic integration of stimulus–response episodes. Visual Cognition, 5, 183–216.
Jonides, J., Schumacher, E., Smith, E., Lauber, E., Awh, E., Minoshima, S., & Koeppe, R. (1997). Verbal working memory load affects regional brain activation as measured by PET. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9, 462–475.
Jonides, J., & Nee, E. (2006). Brain mechanisms of proactive interference in working memory. Neuroscience, 139, 181–193.
Kane, M., Conway, A., Miura, T., & Colflesh, G. (2007). Working memory, attention control and the n-back task: A question of construct validity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33, 615–622.
Kemps, E., Szmalec, A., Vandierendonck, A., & Crevits, L. (2005). Visuo-spatial processing in Parkinson’s disease: Evidence for diminished visuo-spatial sketch pad and central executive resources. Parkinsonism & Related Disorders, 11, 181–186.
Levitt, H. (1970). Transformed up–down methods in psychoacoustics. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 49, 467–477.
Logan, G. (1994). Spatial attention and the apprehension of spatial relations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 1015–1036.
Logan, G., & Cowan, W. (1984). On the ability to inhibit thought and action: A theory of an act of control. Psychological Review, 91, 295–327.
Logan, G., Cowan, W., & Davis, K. (1984). On the ability to inhibit responses in simple and choice reaction time tasks: A model and a method. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 10, 276–291.
Miller, E., & Cohen, J. (2001). An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24, 167–202.
Miyake, A., Friedman, N., Emerson, M., Witzki, A., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 49–100.
Morris, N., & Jones, D. (1990). Memory updating in working memory: The role of the central executive. British Journal of Psychology, 81, 111–121.
Rabbitt, P. (1968). Three kinds of error-signalling responses in a serial choice task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 20, 179–188.
Rabbitt, P. (1997). Methodology of frontal and executive function. Hove:Psychology Press.
Ridderinkhof, K., Band, G., & Logan, G. (1999). A study of adaptive behavior: Effects of age and irrelevant information on the ability to inhibit one’s actions. Acta Psychologica, 101, 315–337.
Rowe, J. B., Toni, I., Josephs, O., Frackowiak, R. S. J., & Passingham, R. E. (2000). The prefrontal cortex: Response selection or maintenance within working memory? Science, 288, 1656–1660.
Schubert, T. (1999). Processing differences between simple and choice reactions affect bottleneck localization in overlapping tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 25, 408–425.
Smith, E., & Jonides, J. (1997). Working memory: A view from neuroimaging. Cognitive Psychology, 33, 5–42.
Smith, E., & Jonides, J. (1999). Storage and executive processes in the frontal lobes. Science, 283, 1657–1661.
Smyth, M., & Scholey, K. (1994). Interference in immediate spatial memory. Memory & Cognition, 22, 1–13.
Stevens, M., Lammertyn, J., Verbruggen, F., & Vandierendonck, A. (2006). Tscope: A C library for programming cognitive experiments on the MS Windows platform. Behavior Research Methods, 38, 280–286.
Szmalec, A., & Vandierendonck, A. (2007). Estimating the executive demands of a one-back choice RT task by means of the selective interference paradigm. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60, 1116–1139.
Szmalec, A., Vandierendonck, A., & Kemps, E. (2005). Response selection involves executive control: Evidence from the selective interference paradigm. Memory and Cognition, 33, 531–541.
Szmalec, A., Verbruggen, F., Vandierendonck, A., De Baene, W., Verguts, T., & Notebaert, W. (2008). Stimulus ambiguity elicits response conflict. Neuroscience Letters, 435, 158–162.
Van der Linden, M., Collette, F., Salmon, E., Delfiore, G., Degueldre, C., Luxen, A., et al. (1999). The neural correlates of updating information in verbal working memory. Memory, 7, 549–560.
Verbruggen, F., Liefooghe, B., & Vandierendonck, A. (2004). The interaction between stop signal inhibition and distractor interference in the flanker and Stroop task. Acta Psychologica, 116, 21–37.
Verbruggen, F., Liefooghe, B., Notebaert, W., & Vandierendonck, A. (2005). The effects of stimulus–stimulus compatibility and stimulus–response compatibility on response inhibition. Acta Psychologica, 120, 307–326.
Verbruggen, F., Liefooghe, B., & Vandierendonck, A. (2006). The effect of interference in the early processing stages on response inhibition in the stop signal task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 190–205.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Szmalec, A., Demanet, J., Vandierendonck, A. et al. Investigating the role of conflict resolution in memory updating by means of the one-back choice RT task. Psychological Research 73, 390–406 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-008-0149-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-008-0149-3