what is attentional refreshing in working memory?

Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. ISSN 0077-8923

ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCESSpecial Issue:Attention in Working MemoryREVIEW

What is attentional refreshing in working memory?

Valerie Camos,1 Matthew Johnson,2 Vanessa Loaiza, 3 Sophie Portrat, 4

Alessandra Souza, 5 and Evie Vergauwe61Departement de Psychologie, Universite de Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland. 2Department of Psychology, University ofNebraska–Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska. 3Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom.4Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition, Universite Grenoble Alpes & CNRS, Grenoble, France. 5Department ofPsychology, Universitat Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. 6Department of Psychology, Universite de Geneve, Geneva, Switzerland

Address for correspondence: Valerie Camos, Departement de Psychologie, Universite de Fribourg, Rue de Faucigny 2, 1700Fribourg, Switzerland. [email protected]

Working memory is one of the most important topics of research in cognitive psychology. The cognitive revolutionthat introduced the computer metaphor to describe human cognitive functioning called for this system in chargeof the temporary storage of incoming or retrieved information to permit its processing. In the past decades, oneparticular mechanism of maintenance, attentional refreshing, has attracted an increasing amount of interest in thefield of working memory. However, this mechanism remains rather mysterious, and its functioning is conceived invery different ways across the literature. This article presents an up-to-date review on attentional refreshing throughthe joint effort of leading researchers in the domain. It highlights points of agreement and delineates future avenuesof research.

Keywords: refreshing; attention; working memory; maintenance; long-term memory; rehearsal

Working memory (WM) is in charge of maintain-ing information for short periods to facilitate itsprocessing. Due to this dual function (maintenanceand processing), WM is considered to be the hubof human cognition,1 and it has become one of themost important topics of research in cognitive psy-chology, resulting in several models that account forits functioning.2–7 To unveil WM functioning, onestriking challenge is to understand how informa-tion is maintained in the face of temporal decay anddistraction. Since the end of the 1990s, one particu-lar mechanism of maintenance, attentional refresh-ing, has attracted an increasing amount of interestto the point that the most famous model of WM,Baddeley’s multicomponent model, proposes it asthe specificmaintenancemechanism of the episodicbuffer, and potentially for the visuospatial sketch-pad as well.2 However, this process remains rathermysterious, and both its conception and its opera-tion are formulated in very different ways across theliterature. Benefitting from the joint effort of lead-ing researchers on this topic, the aim of this paperis to present an up-to-date review of the state of the

research concerning attentional refreshing, synthe-size different theoretical perspectives to uncover thepotential consensus on some aspects, identify out-standing issues to resolve, and flesh out potentialtopics for future research.

How should attentional refreshing bedefined?

Despite the many questions that remain to be clar-ified about attentional refreshing, there is at leastsome agreement on how to define it. Refreshing isbroadly conceivedas adomain-generalmaintenancemechanism that relies on attention to keep mentalrepresentations active.3,8,9 This elementary processwould increase the activation of recently presented,encoded, or retrieved information to keep it in anaccessible state from moment-to-moment, therebyenabling real-time thinking. Refreshing involvesboosting, prolonging, and strengthening the activa-tion of these items when the capacity-limited focusof attention is directed to a representation inWM.10

In other words, refreshing is the act of thinking ofa representation that was activated just a moment

doi: 10.1111/nyas.13616

19Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1424 (2018) 19–32 C© 2018 New York Academy of Sciences.

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5000-7089

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What is attentional refreshing? Camos et al.

Figure 1. This diagram illustrates the evolution of the item/position activation values in the TBRS* model in a fictional task inwhich there are six to-be-recalled letters (ABCDEF) and two distractors interleaved after each letter for which a location judgmenttask has to be performed. The first item to be maintained is A. The light gray area represents the encoding step during which theactivation of A is increased. The next white area represents the time devoted to refreshing items. Since there is only one item (A)encoded so far in WM, the activation value continues to increase until a distracting episode occurs (horizontal hatching area);activation then decays. The task then alternates between free time (refreshing) and distractors (decay) until a new item, B, occurs.During the free time following the encoding of B, as well as during the free time following a concurrent processing episode, the twoitems (A andB) are refreshed in turn: when one is refreshed, the other one decays, and so onuntil the end of the series. This evolutionof activations values derives from the default cumulative schedule of refreshing implemented byOberauer and Lewandowsky.20 Themagnifying circle at the right side of the diagram emphasizes the time course of the respective activation of the six items during arefreshing phase as a function of the three schedules: (A) cumulative, (B) least-activated first, and (C) expanded focus of attention.8

earlier and has not yet become inactive.11 It can alsobe conceived as an instance of reflective attention,that is, as an analogue of perceptual (e.g., visual)attention, where the “spotlight” is placed on oneout of potentially several activeWMrepresentationsinstead of one percept in the visual field. More gen-erally, refreshing is an atomic component of a moreglobal maintenance activity. For example, within a

complex span paradigm in which participants haveto maintain memory items while performing a con-current task, several atomic refreshing episodes cantake placewhen the participant is not engaged in anyother attention-demanding activity (Fig. 1). Thiswould result in enhancing the activation level (bothcognitively and neurally) of a representation that iscurrently active within WM, thereby preventing it

20 Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1424 (2018) 19–32 C© 2018 New York Academy of Sciences.

Camos et al. What is attentional refreshing?

from fading out of immediate awareness. Refresh-ing typically produces better immediate memoryperformance for refreshed information, relative tononrefreshed information or to tasks that precludethe ability to engage in attentional refreshing. Fur-thermore, some authors have proposed that refresh-ing causes the information to be better rememberedin subsequent tests of episodic long-term memory(LTM).12–14 It is also clear that attentional refreshingis distinct from another maintenance mechanism,articulatory rehearsal. Whereas rehearsal is exclu-sively dedicated to the maintenance of verbal infor-mation, refreshing can potentially maintain infor-mation of different sensory modalities, includingverbal, visual, and spatial, as well as multimodalinformation.15,16

How does attentional refreshing operate?

In the literature, a first distinction in how refresh-ing is purported to function concerns its speed andits deliberateness. On the one hand, several authors(including proponents of the time-based resource-sharing (TBRS) model3) suppose that refreshingoccurs quickly and likely largely outside of explicitawareness, or what could be colloquially referredto as “swift refreshing.” On the other hand, oth-ers have studied a slower, more deliberate form ofrefreshing—for example, turning one’s consciousattention to an item, thinking of it, or visualizingit for a time span on the order of several hundredmilliseconds to seconds, perhaps in response to acue in a laboratory task.11,17

An easy analogy can be made between the twoforms of refreshing and different forms of percep-tual attention: Shifts of perceptual attention may bedeliberate, focused, and relatively long-lasting (onthe order of one or more seconds) if a visual taskrelies on sustained attention to a specific item orlocation, but in the context of naturalistic, activevision, perceptual attention shifts can also be unpre-dictable, fleeting (several per second), and relativelyimplicit. And, for both perceptual attention andrefreshing, the two forms are not entirely mutuallyexclusive; a person may sustain primary attentionalfocus on one percept or mental representation forone or more seconds, but also periodically make“swift” shifts of attention to other items. A signif-icant challenge for future studies, and a promisingavenue for new lines of research, would be to bet-ter elucidate the potential similarities and differ-

ences between these two forms of refreshing beyondthe mere different time scales they may work on.Regardless, both formsof refreshing are seenas adis-tinct process from rehearsal. Rehearsal could be seenlike juggling—catching and holding onto each itemin turn, typically in a fairly fixed sequence, beforeheaving it aloft again, at which point it will rise andfall of its ownaccord for some timebeforeneeding tobe recaught. In contrast, refreshing is like spinningplates—in which the performer lightly touches eachplate, sometimes in a fixed sequence but frequentlynot, and adds a small amount of energy in order tomaintain it at a relatively steady level of activation.Both forms of refreshing can be consideredmech-

anisms for enhancing and prolonging the activa-tion of WM representations, but the first formof refreshing (“swift refreshing”) is more explicitlydefined and conceptualized as amechanism forWMmaintenance. Cowan,18 in his embedded-processesmodel, proposed that memory items are refreshedby bringing them back into the capacity-limitedfocus of attention, a proposal thatwas later endorsedby the first version of the TBRS model.19 This con-tinuous shifting of the focus of attention over thememory traces should increase their level of activa-tion and keep them in a high state of accessibility.Other models have endorsed similar conceptionssuch as the TBRS* computational model of WM,20

and recent studies have suggested that each atomicrefreshing on a given memory trace may increaseits specific level of activation.8,9,21 Such refreshingcan act as a sequential scanning or memory searchin what Vergauwe and Cowan22,23 called the cen-tral component of WM. In other words, a one-itemfocus of attention may enhance memory traces thatare already in a high state of activation. For example,in the TBRS model, memory traces are temporarilystored in an episodic buffer. These mental repre-sentations that constitute the contents of WM arein a privileged state of accessibility that is assumedto decrease over time (due to time-based decay),thereby leading to forgetting. Refocusing on an itemallows the memory trace to be boosted, preventingits forgetting. By sequentially browsing the contentsof the episodic buffer, the focus of attention seri-ally reactivates the contents of WM, allowing task-relevant information to remain active and availableindefinitely.Both forms of refreshing could also be compatible

with Oberauer’s concentric model,24 in which three



states of representation accessibility are described.In thismodel, the outermost state, the activated partof LTMholds representations thatmay become rele-vant for theongoing task (e.g., letterswhenperform-ing a letter span task); within those representations,the region of direct access keeps a limited number ofrelevant items easily accessible, while binding themto their relevant context (e.g., the sequence of lettersseen in the current trial); and finally, in the inner-most state, the focus of attention is responsible forselecting a single item for manipulation, bringing itinto a heightened state of accessibility. Refreshing inthis model is implemented by the operation of thefocus of attention upon the contents available in theregion of direct access.

On which kind of representations doesrefreshing operate?

A remaining debate concerns what exactly is beingreactivated by refreshing. Some authors favor theview that refreshing increases the links of a mem-ory trace with its serial position within the list andwith the adjacent items in the list.8,9,20,21 The ideathat the main role of refreshing is to strengthenthe binding of an item to its serial position ina trial or more generally to its original context(e.g., its spatial location in an array) is often fore-grounded by some authors.24,25 This strengtheningof the content–context bindings,which increases thememory for “what” was “where,” would make rep-resentations more available for retrieval from WMand also episodic LTM.26

This debate could result from differences regard-ing what the authors consider to be aWM represen-tation. This could consist of the binding betweena content (e.g., a color or a letter) and a context(e.g., spatial location or serial order), and accessingit coulddependoncue-based retrieval (Fig. 2C).27 Insuch a theoretical view, refreshing likely involves theselection of a single item into the focus of attentionfor binding strengthening.27,28 Refreshing does notsimply boost item-level information (e.g., increas-ing the likelihood that one will remember havingseen a red object), but it actually promotes memoryabout item–context associations (e.g., memory of ared apple, or memory of red in a given location).Alternatively, one of the main functions of WM

could be the construction of mental representationsby the concatenationof perceptual informationpro-vided by the environment and atomic elements

stored inLTMbecauseno representationpreexists inLTM. Forgetting would then result in a degradationof this construction, and refreshing would aim atpreserving or reconstructing themental representa-tions to be as close as possible to their original form.3

Similarly, Johnson11,17 views the fundamental unitupon which refreshing operates to be the “represen-tation,” which is a concept whose common-usagemeaning is nearly as intuitive and natural as that ofan “object” in the study of vision, and equally dif-ficult to define in explicit and concrete terms. Likevisual objects, mental representations can be com-plex and multifaceted, and can consist of smallerparts that are themselves objects/representations,respectively. For example, a mental representationof one’s dog may comprise subrepresentations withvisual, emotional, verbal/semantic, etc., compo-nents of the overall representation, and it maybe possible to specifically refresh (i.e., reflectivelyattend to) one of these aspects of the overall repre-sentation, just as it is possible to direct visual atten-tion to either an entire object (say, a car) or one ofits subobjects (e.g., one of its tires). Thus, the ques-tion of what exactly is being reactivated dependsprimarily on what one considers a WM or mental“representation” and also on how the relationshipsbetween WM and LTM are construed.

How is refreshing of memory tracesimplemented?

Another challenge consists of understanding howrefreshing is implemented. Despite differences inthe exact functioning proposed for refreshing, it isoften seen as a serial mechanism that proceeds atthe item level over the representations available inthe region of direct access25 or episodic buffer,16

resulting in a strengthening of the memory tracesof the corresponding modality (i.e., visual–spatial,verbal).Recent studies have tested the serial refresh-

ing hypothesis according to which spontaneousrefreshing of a memory list operates serially, withthe focus of attention cycling from one item to thenext.16,23,29–33 An obvious way of implementingserial refreshing consists of refreshing the itemsof a memory list in a cumulative, forward order,that is, in the order of presentation starting withthe first-presented memory item, followed by thesecond-presented memory item, etc. Regardless ofthe way in which serial refreshing is implemented,



Figure 2. (A) Flow of events in the refreshing visual WM task employed by Souza et al.11 Participants encoded six colored dots,and at the end of a brief interval were asked to reproduce the color of one dot (marked by a white circle) using a color wheel. Duringmaintenance, cues (arrow) instructed participants to think of WM items (refreshing instruction). WM items were cued 0, 1, or 2times (see inset). (B) Error (distance in degrees on the color wheel) in reproducing the test item’s color as a function of the numberof refreshing steps this item received in the four experiments reported by Souza et al.11 (C) Schematic illustration of the effect ofrefreshing on the bindings between content (represented here by color) and the context (spatial location on the screen).

the idea is that items are brought into the focusof attention, one after the other (Fig. 1A). Conse-quently, the maintenance of order (e.g., the order ofwords in amemory list) could be a by-product of thecumulative and sequential nature of refreshing.34

Alternative implementations have also beenproposed. Although it is commonly admitted thatrefreshing cannot take place at the same time asother attentionally demanding processes because

of an attentional bottleneck (as initially proposedby Barrouillet et al.,19 Fig. 1A), atomic refreshingepisodes can be implemented in ways that are notcumulative. One alternative refreshing schedulecould involve refreshing the one item that is themost likely to be lost, or that is the least activated,at any given time (Fig. 1B). Yet another alternativeproposal comes from the idea that refreshing maybe neither cumulative nor serial: the focus of



attention may be able to zoom in on a single itemor zoom out to span multiple items as a functionof the constraints of the task. Indeed, in the TBRS*architecture,20 the implementation of such aschedule in which several items are simultaneouslyrefreshed within a larger attentional focus8,9

(Fig. 1C) was able to fit published behavioraldata35,36 and reproduced the major TBRS predic-tions through a fictional set of experiments thatwere proposed by Oberauer and Lewandowsky.20

It remains possible that these different sched-ules reflect the distinction between fast and slowerrefreshing. Whereas the slower and more deliberateform of refreshing can be easily conceived as a serialprocess, the swift refreshingmode, in its faster,moreimplicit “scanning” form, may involve the deploy-ment of reflective attention in parallel across multi-ple representations concurrently.On theotherhand,it may well be that the more rapid form of refresh-ing is still a serial process, but that the alternationsin attentional focus between items occur so quicklythat the process would appear to be parallel to allbut the most fine-grained measurements; indeed,at sufficiently high scanning rates, acts of refresh-ing may occur so quickly and briefly that a cleardistinction between serial and parallel processingcannot be made with conventional psychologicalmethodologies.Regardless of theway inwhich refreshing is imple-

mented, the item that is represented in the focusof attention is assumed to be in a privileged stateof heightened accessibility.28,37,38 The local effect ofrefreshing is thus the heightened accessibility of thejust-refreshed WM representation.31 The sponta-neous refreshing reactivates these representationswithout modifying the nature of the involved repre-sentations. However, it is possible that mere reacti-vation through refreshing can be followed by otherattentional processes that might modify and/orenrich the involvedWMrepresentations, potentiallyalso linking together someor all representations thatare activated above threshold at a given point intime.

Which type of attention is engaged?

Most researchers assume that the type of attentionengaged in refreshing is controlled or executive,domain-general, central, and internal in nature, asopposed to domain-specific, perceptual, and exter-nal forms of attention.5 The former is the attention

needed to access stimuli and goal representationsas well as to resolve conflicts between activatedthoughts or action plans. Any cognitive task thattaxes this type of attention during the retentioninterval of a WM task will limit the opportunityto refresh memory items, thus resulting in poorerimmediate memory performance.19,35,39 Theimplication of attention distinguishes refreshingand rehearsal because rehearsal would barely relyon attention, except when required at the onset ofthe motor plan.An alternative is to consider refreshing as highly

analogous to the role that perceptual attention playsin enhancing the level of activation of sensoryinputs. In Johnson’s view, the process of refresh-ing does not require the engagement of a particularform of attention, per se—rather, the refresh opera-tion is a kind of attention.11,17 This formof attentionis presumed to overlap substantially with perceptualattention, both in terms of its cognitive effects andits neural implementation. Like perceptual atten-tion, reflective attention (i.e., refreshing) is thoughtto work in generally the same manner regardless ofwhich typeofmaterial is refreshed, although the spe-cific implementationdetailsmaydiffer in smallways(e.g., in the particular neural subregions involved inrefreshing different types of material). And like per-ceptual attention, short of eliminating conscious-ness, it is likely not possible to block refreshingentirely; as long as sensory stimuli are present,perceptual attention will be deployed in someform among them, and similarly, as long as thereare thoughts in mind, reflective attention will bedeployedamong those. In fact, in themultiple-entry,modular memory (MEM) framework,11 refresh-ing is a critical aspect of the stream of conscious-ness, with that stream essentially being defined bywhich representations are reflectively attended frommoment to moment. That said, reflective attentioncan be inhibited or diminished in various ways. Forexample, there is at least a partial trade-off betweenexternally directed and internally directed attention;when one’s central attentional resources are morestrongly directed externally (toward the perceptualworld), there tends to be a concomitant decline inreflective attention, and vice versa.40

This trade-off between internal and percep-tual attention has been empirically tested in avisual WM task (Fig. 2A) by assessing the costsof distractor tasks engaging either visual attention



(monitor changes in brightness on a visuallydisplayed stimulus) or central attention (decidewhether a tone was of a high or low pitch). Inthat study, only the central-attention distractor taskimpaired visual WM,41 suggesting that refreshingdepends on central attention, and may operate ina parallel and noninterfering manner with percep-tual attention tasks that do not draw upon centralresources. It remains unclear if the involvement ofcentral attention is the sole factor distinguishingwhen refreshing and perceptual attention do and donot interfere with each other; other factors, such asdifficulty or load, have also been suggested.40 How-ever, onepossibility is that taskswithhighperceptualattention loads may in turn place greater demandson central attention, which could explain the exis-tence of interference in those cases.It should be noted that poor immediate perfor-

mance in dual-task conditions might also resultfrom blocking other attentional processes that con-tribute to performance (e.g., consolidation). It iscurrently an open question whether the attentionalrequirements differ for different kinds of memorymaterials; it is possible that the attentional demandsare higher for more complex materials (e.g., withslower refreshing rates for more complex materi-als) or less familiar items. Indeed, some studies haveclaimed that certain types of unfamiliar or noncate-gorical information such as non-Latin characters42

or fonts16 may not be refreshed because a mentalrepresentation cannot be constructed in WM. Inother words, not all forms of information wouldgive rise to a mental representation; some may besolelymaintained in a sensory format, in which theycannot be manipulated, transformed or refreshed.Our theoretical perspective on refreshing does notcritically hinge on claims of what can and cannot berepresented inWM, which we view as a problem forthe broader cognitive psychology community.How-ever, obtaining better support for our general claimthat refreshing operates on all forms of informa-tion that can be expressed as mental representationsremains an outstanding issue for future research.

What is the time course of refreshing?

With regard to the time course of the spontaneous,scanning-style refreshing of a set of elements, it hasbeen proposed that the focus of attention wouldrotate quickly among the different to-be-refreshedWM representations (i.e., high-speed refreshing) at

a rate of 40–50 ms per item in young adults.3,16,22,23

Computational modeling43 suggests that this ratecould be longer in older adults (ca. 200 ms) thanin young adults (ca. 80 ms). Given that there is anattentional bottleneck when a distractor task has tobe carried out concurrently withWMmaintenance,one of two things can happen. Either the cyclingthrough the contents of WM is interrupted becausethe task requires central–internal attention (partic-ularly if processing this information is consideredimportant and urgent), or processing of the distrac-tor task is postponed until the refreshing cycle iscompleted, which is likely the case when there is lit-tle or no time pressure, or when the memory task isgiven higher priority.Other studies have examined the time course of

slower and more deliberate instances of refresh-ing. Evidence from EEG experiments suggests thatthis more deliberate refresh process comprises atleast two temporal subcomponents, one peakingapproximately 400 ms following a cue to refresha representation, and another, more sustained com-ponent lasting from approximately 800–1400 mspostcue.44 In conjunction with evidence from otherEEG and fMRI studies, the earlier subcomponentwas regarded as being associated with anterior pre-frontal cortex activity and the initiation of therefresh action based on interpreting the cue pre-sented, and the later component as being associatedwith an increase in neural activity in posterior brainregions that actually encode the information com-prising a mental representation (e.g., visual regions,in the case of mental representations of visualstimuli).The study of deliberate acts of refreshing has

been accomplished mainly through the cueing ofrepresentations during the retention interval of aWM task (with so-called retro-cues). Retro-cueingbenefits can emerge for time intervals as short as150–250 ms.45,46 This is likely an overestimationof the time required to (deliberately) refresh anitem though, because this estimate also comprisesthe time to detect and interpret the cue. Futurestudies may compare cueing conditions with andwithout refreshing demands, while varying thetime to use the cue, in an effort to estimate pureinstructed refreshing speed. This may or may notconverge with the time it takes to spontaneouslyrefresh items, which has been suggested to be as fastas 50 ms per item. How to measure spontaneous



refreshing speed is still an open question, though.Furthermore, as mentioned previously, it is notclear whether refreshing can be interrupted or ifit proceeds in a ballistic fashion after it is started,thereby postponing other attentionally demandingactivities or even preventing them, in a mannersimilar to an attentional blink.47 Again retro-cuescould become an important tool here: by varyingthe time between two successive retro-cues, onemaystudy whether a second instruction to refresh stopsthe refreshing of a first cued item, or converselywhether an ongoing first instance of refreshinginhibits the initiation of a second.

What limits attentional refreshing?

The effectiveness of refreshing depends on severalfactors that can be split into twomain categories: theconstraints imposed by the task and individual dif-ferences. Regarding the former, because refreshingrequires domain-general central attention, which isa limited resource, its efficiency is limited by anyincrease in concurrent central attentional demand(e.g., the cognitive load of a secondary task in com-plex span tasks). Such an increase can result fromvarious manipulations, such as increasing the paceof the to-be-processed distractors or the type ofprocessing to be performed on the distractors.48

The impact of these manipulations on recall per-formance indexes the use of an attentional mainte-nancemechanism, which is clearly distinct from thearticulatory rehearsal that barely needs attention.The temporal regularity of the task, which improvesthe allocation of attentional resources according tothe Dynamic Attending Theory,49 seems to mod-ulate refreshing efficiency in complex span tasks.For example, WM performance can be enhanced inthe presence of an isochronous rhythm during theretention interval.50

Concerning individual differences, there is someevidence that refreshing efficiency changes over thelife span, such that it is relatively impaired in olderadults13,44,50–54 andchildren55–57 compared to youngadults.Moreover, children younger than the age of 7do not seem to spontaneously use refreshing, as theyare not sensitive to the variation in concurrent atten-tional demand that reliably affects performance inyoung adults and older children.Besides these two main factors, other factors

such as prior knowledge, expertise, or motivationmay also influence refreshing efficiency. In partic-

ular, the nature of the to-be-maintained items mayinfluence the use of refreshing. Recent research indi-cates that some types of memoranda, for example,letter fonts16 andunusual symbols42 arenot sensitiveto manipulations of the cognitive load in a distrac-tor task. One common characteristic among thesefeatures is that they seem less categorical and lessgrounded in LTM than refreshable features (e.g., let-ters, words, locations inmatrices). This suggests thatLTM may play a role in the function of refreshing,a point discussed in the following section. This mayapply, however, only for spontaneous, fast refresh-ing modes. When participants are cued to (delib-erately) refresh continuous visual features (colorsor orientations, as shown in Fig. 2A) in WM, theirperformance improves as a direct function of thenumberof refreshingopportunities.10,41 These stud-ies demonstrate that continuous visual features canbe attended to in WM, thereby receiving a focus-ing boost. Hence, in principle, they are “refresh-able.” It remains possible that more implicit formsof refreshing do not occur spontaneously for thesetypes of materials.

Does refreshing rely on long-termmemory?

Currently, several models describe the relationshipsbetween LTM and WM, either as two separablesystems of memory,2,3,58 or as a unitary memorysystem.59 Between these two extreme theoreticalpositions, several intermediate theories proposeWM as a subset of LTM representations thatare temporarily in a qualitatively distinct stateof accessibility.24,37 Despite the fundamentaldifference regarding the extent to which LTM andWM are related to each other, most theoreticalconceptions highlight the necessity of a two-wayinformation channel between the two systems.Attentional refreshing could be a central processinvolved in this information channel.In the view of the MEM framework,13,17 all pro-

cesses are fundamentally integrated with LTM; inother words, LTM is not considered a separate sys-tem somuch as a fundamental part of themachineryof all cognitive processing. All past cognition leavestraces (in the form of altered neural pathways), andthese traces necessarily must shape all future cog-nition. That said, refreshing can certainly operateupon aWMrepresentation that was recently createdas a result of a new sensory/perceptual experience



of a stimulus that had not previously existed in anindividual’s LTM; still, even basic perceptual pro-cessing relies on prior experience in order to derivemeaningful interpretations of the current sensoryinput, and thus perception itself is fundamentallyreliant on LTM knowledge.As discussed in the previous section, the extant

research regarding the reliance of refreshing on LTMis somewhat mixed. In tasks involvingWMmainte-nance and the more rapid (“swift”) form of refresh-ing, performance for novel visual stimuli was foundto decrease over the course of an unfilled delay andtheir maintenance was not sensitive to the atten-tional load of concurrent distractor tasks.16,42 Thisseems to suggest that either this form of refreshingcannotoperateon this typeof informationorpartic-ipants do not spontaneously do so. At the moment,we lack evidence to distinguish between these twohypotheses.Onepossible avenue forward is to exam-ine the “refreshable” nature of a representation bythe size of the benefits observed when these repre-sentations are explicitly cued to be refreshed (usingretro-cues as discussed above). Neuroimaging stud-ies involving the slower, more deliberate form ofrefreshing for novel faces and scenes suggest thatparticipants are able to recover at least part of thevisual information presented, though it was sub-stantially less than the information (as indexed byactivation in visual brain regions) associated withvisual re-presentation of the items.60,61

The recent version of the TBRS model3 sug-gests that refreshing shares some similarity withthe redintegration mechanism as proposed byHulme et al.62 They assume redintegration occursat recall by using knowledge stored in LTM to repairdegraded WM traces. When attention is available,these traces can be repaired by using LTM elements.The difference between the original proposal62 andthe TBRS latter conception3 is that refreshing byredintegration could occur during the maintenanceperiod (i.e., between encoding and recall) and notonly at recall. This conception3 leads to some pre-dictions about WM functioning and its interac-tions with LTM. If refreshing relies on the retrievalof LTM knowledge, one can expect that the effi-ciency of refreshing should be impacted by theease to retrieve such knowledge. For example, high-frequency words are quickly retrieved from LTM,and thus their redintegration should be easier thanlow-frequency words. Some unpublished recent

work seems to contradict this prediction, becauseno difference in refreshing efficiency was observedwhilemanipulating factors known for affectingLTMretrieval, like word frequency, lexicality, or seman-tic relatedness between memory items. These latestfindings call for alternative functioning for atten-tional refreshing.An alternative viewpoint is that the effectiveness

of refreshing should not necessarily depend onwhether the refreshed information representsexisting knowledge in LTM. Instead, it may be thecase that LTM bolsters the quality of the representa-tions in WM overall relative to novel information,but the actual process of refreshing should beindependent of LTM. A limited number of itemsare centrally represented in WM and these itemsare sequentially brought into the focus of attentionduring spontaneous refreshing of a set of elements.In this viewpoint, refreshing interacts directly onlywith representations that are active in WM and nocritical role is assigned to LTM, although it remainspossible that some grounding in LTM is necessaryto construct a refreshable WM representation.

What counts as evidence for the existenceof refreshing?

As mentioned previously, two different forms ofrefreshing can be defined according to their speed(slow versus fast) and whether they are performedimplicitly or explicitly. Depending on the definitionone accepts for the process of refreshing, its exis-tence might be self-evident. For example, it is clearthat people are capable of focusing their internal,or reflective, attention toward certain representa-tions in WM and not others, so if one choose thisas the definition of refreshing (as is the case forthe MEM framework), then the process must nec-essarily exist. This assertion is strengthened by agreat deal of evidence that the slower, more delib-erate form of refreshing has meaningful cognitiveand neural correlates, which speaks to the utility ofthis construct as a component of cognitive psycho-logical models. Furthermore, many of these effectshave clear parallels in the somewhat more thor-oughly understood domain of perceptual attention,which specifically highlights the usefulness of con-struing the refreshing process as a form of reflectiveattention. These effects include the fact that refresh-ing enhances LTM, is specifically impaired in agingwhereas other cognitive processes (e.g., rehearsal)



Figure 3. Mean WM spans as a function of the approximate cognitive load induced by a variety of tasks involving differentexecutive functions such as response selection and retrieval,47 updating and inhibition.35

are relatively preserved, can produce temporaryimpairments in accessing representations similarto the perceptual phenomenon of inhibition-of-return,61 and exhibits a characteristic pattern ofneural activation that partially overlapswith activitypatterns associated with perceptual attention.60,61,63

In such a view, the existenceof someprocess akin to aformof refreshing is virtually indisputable; themain(or perhaps only) way in which this view could beweakened is if an alternative model were proposedthat could better (and/or more succinctly) accountfor the extant experimental evidence.In parallel to this conception of refreshing, oth-

ers favor an alternative view in which refreshing isa faster and more implicit process that neverthe-less also relies on controlled or executive attention.It is important to say that there is no reason thetwo accounts of refreshing could not coexist. Theycould simply be interpreted as two aspects of whatis fundamentally the same process, just with dif-ferent degrees of intentionality and different timescales. The evidence for the “fast” refreshing haslargely come from paradigms that vary the ability orinstruction to engage in refreshing, either by varyingcognitive load or explicitly directing participants to

refresh memoranda.3,10,35,64 The cognitive load of atask is estimated by the proportion of time duringwhich attention is captured by a secondary activ-ity and distracted from maintenance over the totaltime during which items have to be maintained. Inseveral studies, it has been shown that increasingthe cognitive load results in a linear decrease of thenumber of recalled items (Fig. 3). Importantly, par-allel evidence comes from verbal and visuospatialdomains, suggesting that refreshing is a domain-general function.39

In contrast, characterizations of the deliberate,slower forms of refreshing have largely arisen fromexplicitly guiding the focusof attention to individualWM elements via retro-cues.60,61 Numerous studieshave shown that valid retro-cues improve perfor-mance for tests of the cued item. This retro-cuebenefit can, however, be explained without recourseto refreshing, with one competitive view being thatnoncued items are deemed irrelevant by the reliablecue, being therefore removed from WM to reduceinteritem interference.46 To measure the contribu-tion of refreshing irrespective of removal, multiplecues have been used in a visual WM task: partici-pants maintained an array of colors, and during the



Figure 4. Two alternative accounts for the functioning of the covert retrieval mechanism. M, memory item; in this example,participants would be attempting to remember a four-item list. On the left, all four items are currently available in the centralcomponent of WM, and refreshing them in sequence maintains them as active and available. On the right, prior to covert retrieval,no task-relevant information is within the central component of WM, and the list must be “reloaded” from longer term memorystores.

retention interval a sequence of four cues markedindividual items to be refreshed 0, 1, or 2 times(Fig. 2A).10 To minimize the incentive to removenoncued items, the cues were not informativeregarding the to-be-tested item. The error in report-ing the test color decreased the more often an itemwas refreshed (Fig. 2B), showing that each refresh-ing step conferred a boost to the accessibility of theattended WM representation. This evidence gen-erally indicates that refreshing improves retrievalfromWM. In addition, neuroimaging evidence sug-gests that enhancement of the refreshed item andsuppression of a nonrefreshed item both occur inresponse to a retro-cue, and thus both excitatoryand inhibitory effects of refreshing may contributeto theoverall behavioral advantage for refreshed ver-sus nonrefreshed information in WM and LTM.11

It should be noted that in previous work,14,25,65,66

it has been suggested that a further source of evi-dence for refreshing is the McCabe effect: the find-ing that retrieval from episodic LTM is enhanced formemoranda whose maintenance is regularly inter-ruptedby a secondary task (i.e., complex span) com-pared tomemorandapresentedwithout a secondarytask (i.e., simple span).33 Participants presumablycovertly retrieve the previously presented memo-randaduringpauses between the secondary task andthe next memorandum during complex span tasks,and this observation may lead one to hypothesizethat refreshing and covert retrieval might be thesame process. Indeed, McCabe proposed refresh-ing as a potential mechanism for covert retrieval.

However, McCabe’s initial covert retrieval modelis somewhat agnostic as to its specific mechanismand partially conflates the concepts of refreshing,retrieval, rehearsal, and additional operations. Thefollowing discussionwill use terminology consistentwith our usage elsewhere in this paper.In contrast to our characterization of swift

refreshing as a cycling of very recently presentedand still active representations in the focus of atten-tion, covert retrieval may instead reflect retrievalfromoutside the central component ofWM(Fig. 4).In this view, refreshing operates on active informa-tionwithin the central component ofWM, bringingactive representations one-by-one into the focus ofattention, whereas covert retrieval recovers infor-mation from outside of the central componentof WM (i.e., LTM). Accordingly, refreshing andcovert retrieval would be theoretically distinguish-able. The investigations of this interpretation ofcovert retrieval are still underway, but results thus farindicate it may be accurate. If refreshing and covertretrieval are indistinct, then varying the attentionaldemand of the secondary processing componentshould likewise moderate the McCabe effect as itdoes for immediate recall fromWM (Fig. 3). In sev-eral thus far unpublished studies and one publishedstudy,67 this was not the case. Furthermore, a recentstudy has revealed that the McCabe effect may bean instance of the benefit incurred by prolongingthe time individual items can be attended to justafter they have been encoded, with no real bene-fit of interspersing distraction episodes during the



maintenance of these items.68 Given this accruingevidence, it is less likely that refreshing and covertretrieval are identical, and instead it is proposed thatretrieval of information from outside of the centralcomponentofWMmayco-occur alongside the swiftrefreshing that takes placewithin the central compo-nent. Furthermore, this understanding of refreshingand retrieval may facilitate the resolution of incon-gruous findings, such as whether refreshing relieson LTM.66

Finally, another source of evidence is the age-related changes in refreshing throughout childhood.Contrary to older children, recall performance inchildren younger than 7 years of age is not sensi-tive to variation in cognitive load but to the over-all maintenance duration of the secondary activityduring a complex span task.69 This suggests thatpreschoolers are not using attentional refreshing tomaintain information, which suffers from a time-related decay. After 7, children’s performance isaffected by the cognitive load of the secondary task,with the impact of cognitive load increased withage.52 Refreshing thus seems increasingly efficient inmaintaining memory traces with age, and this effi-ciency is related to age-related changes in process-ing speed.70 However, aging studies enlighten thefact that maintaining WM traces is probably morecomplex than a simple recirculation of the informa-tion into the focus of attention.52. Indeed, peoplereport using strategies (e.g., elaboration) to main-tain information during a complex span task.51,71

Hence, it remains to be understood to what extentalternative maintenance mechanisms or strategiescan account for the observed age-related variationin recall performance as a function of cognitive load.To summarize, clear evidence for refreshing con-

sists of demonstrating the distant effect of refresh-ing, that is, refreshing results in better immediateand delayed memory performance, and the localeffect of refreshing, that is, the increased activa-tion and accessibility of just-refreshed information.Both of these should be done while excluding theoperation of other maintenance mechanisms (likesubvocal rehearsal) and could be compared betweensituations inwhich the act of refreshingoccurs spon-taneously versus upon instructions.

Conclusion

Certainly, there are challenges in characterizing howrefreshing functions and even in establishing defini-

tivelywhether such aprocess exists. Thedispute overthe existence of refreshing largely may have origi-nated from an unnecessary conflation of refreshingwith decay-based forgetting. If one ascribes the roleof protection from trace decay in WM to refresh-ing, and yet trace decay may not exist, then it isreasonable to argue that refreshing is a superfluousfunction. However, if refreshing is instead concep-tualized as a mechanism that strengthens represen-tations as it was originally conceived, then the linkbetween refreshing and decay is not necessary.Further details of how refreshing functions

remain to be fully clarified. A challenge for thenotion that refreshing acts serially and cumulatively,with each item refreshed one-by-one in its originalorder of presentation, is the failure to find a changein the accessibility of the presumably refreshed let-ters during a probe-span task. Instead, it may be thecase that refreshing acts by strengthening the least-activated item first. Furthermore, the precise timecourse of refreshing, whether refreshing strengthenscontent–context bindings or only the items them-selves, and whether LTM moderates the efficiencyof refreshing are all outstanding issues to clarify.Nevertheless, the significant progress that has

been made should not be understated. The cur-rent status of the field has moved forward to suchan extent that researchers from different theoreticalperspectives are working together largely to refinethe details of how refreshing functions to directattention in WM to representations that are nolonger physically present in the environment. Thisarticle integrating these perspectives from differentauthors is in itself a strong sign of the change thefield is experiencing.

Acknowledgments

Each author contributed equally to the article,except the first author who was in charge ofsynthesizing the respective contributions of theother authors. Preparation of this paper was sup-ported by an International Exploratory Workshopgrant from the Swiss National Science Foundation(project number IZ32Z0_173389) to “The cross-roads of attention in working memory: Consolida-tion, refreshing and removal” workshop organizedby A. Souza and E. Vergauwe.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.



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