Memory consolidation of attended information is optional: Comment on Jiang et al. (2016)

Brad Wyble, Hui Chen

Research output: Contribution to journalComment/debatepeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

Attribute amnesia is a phenomenon in which information about a stimulus that was just recently used to perform a task is poorly remembered in a surprise test (Chen & Wyble, 2015a). In a recent article by Jiang, Shupe, Swallow, and Tan (2016), this effect was replicated but with an additional priming measure that revealed some carryover memory for the information that participants had trouble explicitly reporting on the surprise trial. Their work invites a discussion of the underlying cause of attribute amnesia by suggesting that the surprise question caused an overwriting of working memory contents. Although we agree that overwriting may be partially responsible for the inability to report, data from other experiments have suggested that a failure to consolidate a robust memory of the attended information is a major cause of the amnesia. We discuss experimental evidence supporting the theory that memory consolidation of attended information is an optional process that can be selectively evoked by task requirements.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)997-1000
Number of pages4
JournalJournal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition
Volume43
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2017

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
  • Linguistics and Language

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