Attention switching and working memory spans

Abstract

Barrouillet and Camos (2001) concluded from their developmental study on working memory that when performing complex span tasks, individuals maintain memory items by switching rapidly their attention from processing to storage while performing the concurrent task. Thus, a processing component that would require a continuous attentional focusing should have a highly detrimental effect on span. The present study verifies two predictions issuing from this hypothesis by comparing the classical self‐paced reading and operation span tasks with new computer‐paced tasks in adults. First, any increase in the pace at which the processing component of a working memory span task has to be performed impedes switching and then leads to lower spans. Second, when presented at a fast pace, even simple activities such as reading letters or adding and subtracting 1 to small numbers have an effect on spans as detrimental as complex activities like reading and understanding sentences or solving complex equations.

Notes

Correspondence should be addressed to Raphaëlle Lépine, Université de Bourgogne, Laboratoire LEAD, C.N.R.S. UMR 5022, Pôle AAFE, Esplanade Erasme, BP 26513, 21065 Dijon Cedex, France. Email: Raphaelle.Lepine@leadserv .u‐bourgogne.fr

The authors would like to thank Valérie Camos for her comments and suggestions on previous drafts of this paper.

Though, technically, the operation span and the reading span tasks we used in Experiments 1 and 2 respectively are not the seminal versions of Daneman and Carpenter's (1980) and Turner and Engle's (1989) tasks, we refer to these tasks as the “traditional working memory span tasks” because they share with these previous versions two main characteristics. Like these seminal versions, and most of the working memory span tasks used in the literature, they are self‐paced and involve a complex processing component.