Kessler, Y. & Guy, M.
Department of Psychology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel
An updating variant of Jolicoeur & Dell’Acqua’s (1998) paradigm was used to examine the role of short-term consolidation in working memory (WM) updating. In each trial, a set of letters appeared on the screen and the participants had to update their WM with the new information. The number of updated items was varied between one trial and another. After several updating trials a tone appeared, and the participants had to judge the tone pitch, and then to recall the last stimulus set that was presented. Stimulus onset interval (SOA) between the last updating trial and the tone was manipulated. Reaction times (RTs) for the tone judgment served to measure the updating duration. When the entire WM set was presented in each trial, RT for the updating conditions decreased with SOA within a given set-size, but was insensitive to the number of changed items. When only the updated items were presented in each trial, RT was sensitive both to the number of changed items and the total set-size. The results are discussed in relation to local and global WM updating processes (Kessler & Meiran, 2008), and suggest a role of short term consolidation in global updating.