Is the cognitive system much more robust than anticipated? Dual-task costs and residuals in working memory
Résumé
Several working memory (WM) theories assume a resource sharing between the maintenance
of information and its processing, whereas other theories suppose that these two functions of
WM rely on different pools of resources. Studies that addressed this question by examining
whether dual-task costs occur in tasks combining processing and storage have led to mixed
results. Whereas some of them reported symmetric dual-task costs, others found no or
negligible effects, while still others found a reduction in performance in memory but not in
processing. In the present experiment, we tested whether these discrepancies in results might
be due to participants strategically prioritizing one component of the task over the other.
Thus, we asked participants to perform at their maximum level (i.e. span level) in one
component of the dual task and assessed performance on the other. In line with resourcesharing views, results indicated that performing at span on one task strongly degraded
performance on the other, with symmetric costs. However, important residuals in both
processing and storage suggested an unexpected resilience of the cognitive system that any
resource-sharing theory must take into account.
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