TY  - JOUR
A1  - Soemer, Alexander
T1  - Task-unrelated thoughts and forgetting in working memory
JF  - Journal of memory and language
N2  - The present article reports four experiments that investigated the effects of task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) on forgetting in non-verbal working memory. Participants had to remember three non-verbal stimuli over unfilled retention intervals (RIs) and then judge whether or not a subsequently presented probe stimulus matched one of the to-be-remembered stimuli. Participants additionally responded to randomly appearing probes that measured different aspects of their TUT engagement during the RI of the preceding trial. Forgetting over unfilled RIs was observed in three of four experiments and reliably associated with the proportion of time spent on TUTs. In contrast, the visual and auditory nature of the TUTs and the number of different TUTs did not reliably predict forgetting. The results support the view that TUTs block attention-based processes that are needed for restoring decaying memory representations rather than an alternative account in terms of interference caused by the content of the TUTs.
KW  - Short-term memory
KW  - Working memory
KW  - Forgetting
KW  - Decay
KW  - Interference
KW  - Mind wandering
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.03.004
SN  - 0749-596X
SN  - 1096-0821
VL  - 106
SP  - 118
EP  - 134
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - San Diego
ER  -