Evidence that perceptual attention and WM maintenance share a limited resource is not yet convincing¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r3 · q2
Currency · newest study 2019 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Although attending to perceptual information and maintaining information in WM have much in common, the evidence that they share a limited resource is not yet convincing. → Oberauer 2019

Evidence¶

Oberauer 2019¶

Oberauer, K. (2019). Working Memory and Attention – A Conceptual Analysis and Review. Journal of Cognition, 2(1): 36. https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.58

q2 · i? · review · r3

The review's narrative assessment of dual-task studies combining visual WM with visual attention tasks. Some found load-dependent costs (Fougnie & Marois, 2006) while others found only negligible costs (Souza & Oberauer, 2017), and costs between WM and visual search increase with load only for spatial WM contents. The two functions "have much in common" but resource sharing is unproven.

"although attending to perceptual information and maintaining information in WM after it disappeared from the environment have much in common, the evidence that they share a limited resource is not yet convincing"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Perceptual attention and working memory are distinct entities that causally affect each other — related
• There is no convincing evidence that loading WM depletes a resource needed for the control of attention — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• A shared attentional resource for storage and processing is the best supported resource theory of WM capacity but faces empirical challenges — reports the opposite