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  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ehm, Jan-Henning
A1  - Lonnemann, Jan
A1  - Brandenburg, Janin
A1  - Huschka, Sina Simone
A1  - Hasselhorn, Marcus
A1  - Lervag, Arne
T1  - Exploring factors underlying children’s acquisition and retrieval of sound sound-symbol association skills
JF  - Journal of experimental child psychology
N2  - Letter knowledge is considered an important cognitive foundation for learning to read. The underlying mechanisms of the association between letter knowledge and reading skills are, however, not fully understood. Acquiring letter knowledge depends on the ability to learn and retrieve sound–symbol pairings. In the current study, this process was explored by setting preschool children’s (N = 242, mean age = 5.57 years) performance in the acquisition and retrieval of a paired associate learning (PAL) task in relation to their letter knowledge as well as to their performance in tasks assessing precursors of reading skills (i.e., phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, phonological short-term memory, backward recall, and response inhibition). Multiple regression analyses revealed that performance in the acquisition of the PAL task was significantly associated with phonological awareness and backward recall, whereas performance in the retrieval of the PAL task was significantly associated with rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, and backward recall. Moreover, PAL proved to be mediating the relation between reading precursors and letter knowledge. Together, these findings indicate that the acquisition of letter knowledge may depend on a visual–verbal associative learning mechanism and that different factors contribute to the acquisition and retrieval of such visual–verbal associations.
KW  - Visual-verbal associative learning
KW  - Phonological awareness
KW  - Letter knowledge
KW  - Rapid automatized naming
KW  - Working memory
KW  - Reading
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2018.07.006
SN  - 0022-0965
SN  - 1096-0457
VL  - 177
SP  - 86
EP  - 99
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - New York
ER  -