Corbin, L. 1 & Camos, V. 2
1 LEAD. Université de Bourgogne. Dijon, France
2 Université de Fribourg. Fribourg, Switzerland
Different mechanisms of maintenance of verbal information in working memory have been described. They vary in depth of processing of the memoranda, from a superficial recirculation of the phonological information by subvocal rehearsal, to the reactivation of the memory traces by attentional refreshing and to the association of the memory items with long-term memory knowledge through elaborative rehearsal. Previous works have shown that deeper processing by refreshing or elaborative rehearsal leads to better recall than when subvocal rehearsal is used. In the present study, we compared the impact on recall of a reduction of attention in a complex span task when participants were instructed to use one of these three maintenance strategies. Results revealed that the benefits of deeper processing are at the cost of higher attentional demand. Thus, increase in recall performance could emerge not through depth of processing but because the memoranda benefit from greater allocation of attention.