Attention with or without working memory: mnemonic reselection of attended information

Yingtao Fu, Chenxiao Guan, Joyce Tam, Ryan E. O'Donnell, Mowei Shen, Brad Wyble, Hui Chen

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Attention has been regarded as the ‘gatekeeper’ controlling what information gets selected into working memory. However, a new perspective has emerged with the discovery of attribute amnesia, a phenomenon revealing that people are frequently unable to report information they have just attended to moments ago. This report failure is thought to stem from a lack of consolidating the attended information into working memory, indicating a dissociation between attention and working memory. Building on these findings, a new concept called memory reselection is proposed to describe a secondary round of selection among the attended information. These discoveries challenge the conventional view of how attention and working memory are related and shed new light onto modeling attention and memory as dissociable processes.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1111-1122
Number of pages12
JournalTrends in Cognitive Sciences
Volume27
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2023

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
  • Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

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