Boyvadaoglu, Murat Can (2024) Are Functionally Passive Items in Working Memory More Resistant to Interference? Master thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
In the literature on working memory (WM), items that are immediately needed and related to the current task are referred to as active items, while those that are not immediately required and will become relevant later are called passive items. Encoding in WM has long been thought to go hand-in-hand with active and sustained neural firing. However, relatively recent findings suggest this might not be the case. It has been proposed that encoding in WM could be dynamic and dependent on certain properties of the item—whether it is active or passive. Some items may be stored in activity-silent states without the need for sustained neural firing. This storage is maintained through different systems, one of which is short-term synaptic plasticity (STSP). The STSP model suggests that information can be stored via the connections between neurons, i.e., synapses. Such a form of encoding may offer certain advantages, one of which is potentially being more resilient to distraction. In this study, we tested whether passive items in WM, which are not immediately related to the task, could be encoded in activity-silent systems and whether this could make them more resistant to interference. We found that interference had a significant effect on both active and passive items. However, we did not find any evidence to suggest that passive items are more protected against distraction during the task.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Akyurek, E.G. and Wilhelm, S.A. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | Cognitive Psychology and Psychophysiology (CPP) [Master Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Oct 2024 13:36 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Oct 2024 13:36 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4418 |
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