ArticleCognition2023
Bend but don't break: Prioritization protects working memory from displacement but leaves it vulnerable to distortion from distraction.
Article in Cognition, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Working Memory States Modulate Arithmetic Estimation Strategy Processing: Evidence from Visual and Articulatory Interference.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Memory recall errors reflect interacting sensory and mnemonic representations.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- The consequences of strategic prioritization in working memory.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Prioritizing feature bindings across space and modality in working memory.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- Color-semantic congruency boosts distractor resistance in visual working memory: an alpha-band oscillation perspective.Psychological research · 2026Article
- Retinotopic Spatial Working Memory Representations Are Not Affected by Task-irrelevant Visual Stimuli.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Refreshing boosts memory but does not protect it against interference.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- When similarity is less disruptive: feature-sharing distractors in visual working memory under diffuse attention.Frontiers in cognition · 2026Article
- Visual working memory prioritization modulates serial dependence beyond simple attentional effects.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Memory recall errors reflect interacting sensory and mnemonic representations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Signal Intrusion Explains Divergent Effects of Visual Distraction on Working Memory.Psychological science · 2025Article
- Neural Dynamics of Reselecting Visual and Motor Contents in Working Memory after External Interference.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- What are the benefits of directed attention within verbal working memory?Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2025Article
- An Examination of Distractor Susceptibility of Prioritized and Unprioritized Information in Visual Working Memory.Journal of cognition · 2025Article
- Integration of history information Drives Serial Dependence and Stabilizes Working Memory Representations.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Dimension-based retro-cue benefit in working memory does not require unfocused dimension removal.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Perceptual distraction distorts visual working memory representations. Previous research has shown that memory responses are systematically biased towards passively viewed visual distractors that are similar to the memoranda. However, it remains unclear whether the prioritization of one working memory representation over another reduces the impact of perceptual distractors. We designed a study with five different types of visual distraction that varied in engagement and found evidence for both subtle distortions and catastrophic failures of memory. Importantly, prioritization protected working memories from catastrophic loss (fewer "swap errors") but rendered them more vulnerable to distortion (greater attractive "biases" towards the distractor). Our findings demonstrate that prioritization does not simply protect working memory from any and all interference, but rather it reduces the likelihood of catastrophic disruption from perceptual distraction at the cost of an increased likelihood of distortion.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.