ArticlePsychonomic bulletin & review2025
Strategic control finely tunes working memory performance without the benefit of selection history.
Article in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
People can predict the probability of an event occurring and allocate mental resources accordingly. For example, the likelihood of recalling an item from working memory varies as a function of the importance of recalling that item. Strategic control is thought to finely tune working memory performance using probabilistic information, but a possible contribution of automatic processes based on selection history has not been investigated. To determine if graded working memory performance is due to strategic control or selection history, probabilistic information was either blocked (Experiment 1) or changed from trial to trial (Experiment 2). A spatial cue indicated the likelihood (i.e., 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%) that one of two colors would have to be recalled. Attention was directed externally by a pre-cue presented before the memory array or internally by a retro-cue after the memory array. As in previous studies, cue effects increased linearly with greater predictability of the cue in the blocked conditions of Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, this finding was replicated despite a lower contribution from selection history when probability changed from trial to trial. In both experiments, cue effects were similar for the pre-cue and retro-cue conditions. Taken together, these results demonstrate that probability effects on WM performance are due to finely tuned strategic control without a strong contribution from selection history.
Indexed as
Identifiers
40119232What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.