General and experimental psychology
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Online colloquium by Dr. Meyers

Resolving Interference Between Working Memories For Different Uses

20.05.2020

When: 20th 05, 2020, 18:00 CET

Zoom link for the meeting: https://lmu-munich.zoom.us/j/91587030299

Meeting ID: 915-8703-0299

Please contact Artyom (artyom.zinchenko@gmail.com) for the password.

Title

Resolving Interference Between Working Memories For Different Uses

Abstract
Selective attention can help overcome the capacity limits of working memory by placing important information in the ‘focus of attention’, a representational state that improves recall. This kind of prioritization may draw on prospective coding – that is, maintaining WM information as part of a task set that is suited to a context-appropriate response to an upcoming requirement to act. I will present recent behavioral and electrophysiological data that are consistent with this view. The existence of multiple representational states in WM – storing information for immediate action in a preferred state while holding onto less important information in a latent state – may help ensure that upcoming behavior is only guided by currently relevant information without interference from WM contents that are irrelevant now but may become important later. Our framework further predicts that prioritized information should be maintained differently for different anticipated uses, suggesting a multiplicity of neural coding formats. I will present recent neural evidence showing when these coding formats generalize across different contexts.