Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50

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Journal of Memory and Language

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jml

Consolidating working memory: Distinguishing the effects

of consolidation, rehearsal and attentional refreshing in a
working memory span task
Donna M. Bayliss a,⇑, Jade Bogdanovs a, Christopher Jarrold a,b
a
Neurocognitive Development Unit, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Australia
b
School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In a series of experiments, we demonstrated that manipulating the opportunity that indi-
Received 17 March 2014 viduals had to consolidate each memory item produced systematic differences in working
revision received 20 December 2014 memory span performance. In young adults, presenting an unfilled delay interval immedi-
ately following the presentation of each to-be-remembered item and before the onset of a
distractor processing activity produced enhanced working memory performance relative to
Keywords: when the same delay interval was presented after the processing activity. In addition, the
Short-term consolidation
beneficial effect of providing an opportunity for consolidation was unaffected by manipu-
Working memory
Attentional refreshing
lations of processing difficulty (Experiment 1), processing pace (Experiment 2), and artic-
Articulatory rehearsal ulatory suppression (Experiment 3). Finally, we demonstrated that RT functions consistent
with a process of short-term consolidation are evident at longer item presentation times
more commonly associated with working memory span tasks (Experiment 4). Together,
these results suggest that the process of consolidation is separable from articulatory
rehearsal and attentional refreshing. Moreover, these results are difficult to account for
in terms of cognitive load, temporal distinctiveness, and/or distractor removal and suggest
that current models of working memory may need to be modified to take into account the
temporal parameters associated with the initial consolidation of memory items.
Ó 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction working memory have been the subject of extensive

Working memory is thought to be responsible for the
active maintenance and management of information
required to complete current task goals (Baddeley, 1986),
and is commonly measured using working memory span
tasks that require both the maintenance of a series of to-
be-remembered items and the completion of a concurrent
processing activity (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). The
factors influencing the maintenance of information in
⇑ Corresponding author at: School of Psychology, Mailbag M304, The
University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009,
Australia. Fax: +61 (0) 8 6488 1006.
E-mail address: donna.bayliss@uwa.edu.au (D.M. Bayliss).
research in the 40 years since the seminal model of
Baddeley and Hitch (1974) was first proposed. A central
tenet of the Baddeley and Hitch model was that verbal
information was maintained in working memory through
a process of rehearsal (Baddeley, Lewis, & Vallar, 1984),
and extensive research has been devoted to understanding
this mechanism (Awh et al., 1996; Baddeley, 1986;
Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975; Tam, Jarrold,
Baddeley, & Sabatos-DeVito, 2010; Tan & Ward, 2008).
However, more recent conceptualisations of working
memory have begun to suggest that other processes in
addition to rehearsal may be important for the successful
maintenance of information in memory (Camos, Lagner,

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2014.12.004
0749-596X/Ó 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
& Barrouillet, 2009; Cowan, 1999; Tam et al., 2010). In par-
ticular, a number of researchers have argued for a process
of attentional refreshing that acts to maintain information
stored in working memory by focusing domain-general
attention on to-be-remembered items (Barrouillet,
Bernardin, & Camos, 2004; Barrouillet, Portrat, & Camos,
2011; Johnson, 1992), with considerable evidence amassed
to support this view (Barrouillet, Bernardin, Portrat,
Vergauwe, & Camos, 2007; Camos et al., 2009; Raye,
Johnson, Mitchell, Greene, & Johnson, 2007; Raye,
Johnson, Mitchell, Reeder, & Greene, 2002). Additionally,
some recent investigations have suggested that the process
of consolidating information into working memory may
also play a role in determining performance
(Nieuwenstein & Wyble, 2014; Ricker & Cowan, 2014;
Vergauwe, Camos, & Barrouillet, 2014). However, the nat-
ure of the consolidation process in the context of working
memory remains relatively underspecified and, impor-
tantly, little is known about how it relates to the more
established processes of rehearsal and attentional refresh-
ing. The current study aimed to address these issues by
examining the effect of providing an opportunity for con-
solidation in a working memory span task, and differenti-
ating this effect from those associated with attentional
refreshing and articulatory rehearsal.
Short-term consolidation refers to the processing
involved in transforming fragile, transient sensory input
into more durable memory representations (Chun &
Potter, 1995; Jolicoeur & Dell’Acqua, 1998) and has been
distinguished from the more basic sensory and perceptual
encoding involved in the detection and identification of a
stimulus (Jolicoeur & Dell’Acqua, 1998; Nieuwenstein &
Wyble, 2014; Ricker & Cowan, 2014). The transmission of
information during sensory and perceptual encoding is
thought to be fast and to occur in parallel, with representa-
tions formed during these stages subject to rapid forgetting
unless they undergo a process of consolidation. In contrast,
the process of consolidation, which is thought to occur
after these basic encoding stages, is argued to be time-con-
suming and reliant on central attentional mechanisms
(Jolicoeur & Dell’Acqua, 1998). Consolidated memory rep-
resentations are thought to be available for later report
in the absence of ongoing sensory input (Chun & Potter,
1995; Jolicoeur & Dell’Acqua, 1998), to be able to with-
stand interference from new information entering the sys-
tem (Nieuwenstein & Wyble, 2014), and to be more
resistant to forgetting (Ricker & Cowan, 2014). Ricker and
Cowan (2014) have likened encoding to the sensory activa-
tion of features in long-term memory and consolidation to
the entry of these features into Cowan’s (1988, 1995) focus
of attention. A number of frameworks have proposed a
similar distinction between initial sensory encoding and
the subsequent formation or consolidation of integrated
representations in short-term memory (e.g., Chun &
Potter, 1995; Jolicoeur & Dell’Acqua, 1998; Massaro,
1975; Nieuwenstein & Wyble, 2014) and we will follow
suit in using this distinction and terminology. However,
we remain open to the possibility that what we and others
have termed consolidation may in fact reflect the operation
of other post-encoding processes and will return to this
issue in the General Discussion.
35
Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua (1998) were one of the first to
provide a systematic investigation of the process of short-
term consolidation. They developed a paradigm for investi-
gating the time course of consolidation by combining a
visual memory task with an auditory forced-choice reac-
tion time task. Participants were presented with a visual
stimulus item (a letter or symbol) which was quickly
masked, followed by the forced-choice reaction time task,
which involved judging tones as being either high or low
in pitch by making an appropriate keypress. Finally, partic-
ipants were required to recall the initial visual memory
stimulus. The time interval between the presentation of
the initial memory stimulus and the onset of the tone
was varied systematically. The hypothesis was that if the
memory stimulus was still being consolidated when the
tone was presented, reaction times to the tone would be
slowed relative to a tone presented after consolidation
had finished, when an individual’s central attentional
mechanisms would again be available. Results consistently
showed that reaction times to the tone were slower when
the interval between the initial memory stimulus and the
tone was short, and became increasingly faster as this
interval increased. This was taken as evidence of a process
of consolidation. Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua (1998) went on
to demonstrate that this process of consolidation was
under conscious control, by including a condition in which
participants were still presented with the memory items,
but were instructed to ignore these and to just respond
to the choice reaction time task, as recall was not required
at the end of each trial. For this condition, reaction times to
the tone were unaffected by temporal proximity to the ini-
tial stimulus, suggesting that the slowed reaction times in
the former condition were specifically associated with the
need to remember information and not simply the percep-
tual characteristics of the task. Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua
(1998) concluded that consolidation is an important pro-
cess involved in transferring information into short-term
memory, and that it requires central processing resources.
Although considerable research has been devoted to
establishing the basic parameters of the consolidation pro-
cess (Jolicoeur, 1999; Jolicoeur & Dell’Acqua, 1999;
Nieuwenstein & Wyble, 2014; Stevanovski & Jolicoeur,
2007, 2011), it is not currently known whether the process
of consolidation is important for performance on a typical
working memory span task. However, converging evidence
from studies that have manipulated the time available for
post-encoding processing in other paradigms suggests that
it is likely to be a contributing factor. For example, a recent
study by Barrouillet, Plancher, Guida, and Camos (2013)
showed that increasing the time available for the encoding
of memory items in a serial recall task, by presenting mem-
ory items at a slow (i.e., 5000 ms per item) rather than a
fast (i.e., 500 ms per item) pace, led to better recall of the
memory items. Moreover, recall of the memory items pre-
sented at a slow pace was more resistant to an increase in
the number of distractors presented during retrieval, sug-
gesting that the memory traces may have been protected
to some extent from event-based interference, but were
still affected by an increase in the attentional demand of
the distractors. Barrouillet et al. (2013) attributed the dif-
ference between the fast and slow paced conditions to
36 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
the increased time allowed for consolidation of the mem-
ory items. However, the paradigm used by Barrouillet
et al. (2013) did not prevent articulatory rehearsal during
presentation of the memory items and so it is unclear
whether the beneficial effects reported in their study really
reflect greater consolidation of the memory items or just a
greater opportunity for rehearsal.
Similarly, Ricker and Cowan (2014) showed that equat-
ing the time available for post-encoding processing, but
not basic encoding time, led to equivalent rates of forget-
ting in a visual probe recognition paradigm. In their para-
digm, participants were presented with three unfamiliar
visual characters either simultaneously or sequentially,
followed by a mask and then a variable retention interval.
When only the time available for sensory and perceptual
encoding was equated, the rate of forgetting across the
retention intervals was greater for the simultaneous condi-
tion than the sequential. However, when blank intervals
were inserted into the simultaneous condition (by present-
ing the whole memory array multiple times) to also equate
the free time available across the two conditions, the dif-
ference in forgetting rates was eliminated. Ricker and
Cowan (2014) argued that this equated the amount of time
available for the consolidation of each memory item into
memory, and concluded that consolidation time was an
important determinant of working memory performance.
Finally, using a Brown–Peterson paradigm in which par-
ticipants are presented with a series of items to remember
followed by a distractor processing activity, Vergauwe
et al. (2014) showed that response times for the first pro-
cessing item increased linearly with memory load (cf.
Jarrold, Tam, Baddeley, & Harvey, 2011). This increase in
response times for the first processing item was evident
for both verbal and spatial memoranda and spatial and
numerical processing tasks, and was estimated to be
around 250 ms per item. Vergauwe et al. (2014) attributed
this increase to the time required for consolidation of the
memory items, which they argued was attentionally
demanding and led to a postponement of the processing
activity. Response times on subsequent processing items
(i.e., all processing items apart from the first within each
processing episode) also showed a linear increase with
memory load, however, the magnitude of this increase
was estimated to be around 50 ms per item, which
Vergauwe et al. (2014) attributed to the cost associated
with attentional refreshing.
There is, therefore, good reason to believe that the pro-
cess of consolidation may be important for working mem-
ory performance, but crucially none of these studies have
used a working memory span task in which the distracting
processing activity is interspersed between the memory
items. The rapid switching that occurs between the encod-
ing of each memory item and completion of an interleaved
processing activity in a working memory span task would
suggest that a consolidation process may be particularly
susceptible to interruption in these tasks (see Jarrold
et al., 2011, for evidence that memory performance is
affected by the location of the distractor processing
activity). If the opportunity for consolidation does affect
performance on commonly used working memory tasks,
it will be important to take this into consideration when
designing future studies, as unintentionally impeding the
consolidation process may in turn affect working memory
span performance and relationships found between work-
ing memory and other higher-level cognitive abilities.
Moreover, studying consolidation within the context of a
working memory span task will have important theoretical
implications for current models of working memory that
do not incorporate such a process.
Indeed, a key issue that is yet to be addressed is
whether the process of consolidation differs from other
processes such as attentional refreshing and articulatory
rehearsal that are known to be important for working
memory performance; it could certainly be argued that
consolidation is simply an extension of the same mainte-
nance processes that are known to operate once items
are initially encoded in memory. There is some evidence
to suggest that this is not the case. Stevanovski and
Jolicoeur (2007) combined the Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua
(1998) paradigm described above with an articulatory sup-
pression task and showed a similar pattern of results as in
the earlier Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua study. That is, RTs to a
choice RT task decreased as the time between the presen-
tation of the memory item and the choice RT task
increased. This suggests that the process of consolidation
is independent of articulatory rehearsal. In addition,
Stevanovski and Jolicoeur (2007) showed that the slope
of the consolidation function was unaffected by an increase
in memory load from one to three items, even though RTs
increased overall. This suggests that although there is a
cost associated with the concurrent maintenance of a
memory load, the efficiency of the consolidation process
appears to be independent of this cost. However, in terms
of the relationship between consolidation and attentional
refreshing, no study has attempted to distinguish these
processes from one another, though different timescales
have been suggested to be associated with each (e.g., see
Vergauwe et al., 2014).
The current series of experiments was therefore
designed to investigate whether short-term consolidation
is important for working memory span performance and
to examine the distinction between consolidation, articula-
tory rehearsal and attentional refreshing. The first of these
aims was addressed by manipulating the opportunity that
participants had to consolidate memory items in a working
memory span task. The tasks used here were modified ver-
sions of the computer-paced complex span tasks used by
Barrouillet et al. (2004, 2007) and Lépine, Bernardin, and
Barrouillet (2005), as these allow for the timing of opera-
tions to be manipulated precisely. Each task involved a ser-
ies of memory items, with an interleaved processing
activity that was to be completed after the presentation
of each memory item. In one condition, an opportunity
for consolidation was provided by presenting a blank delay
interval immediately following the presentation of each
memory item and before the onset of the processing activ-
ity. The rationale was that in this condition, participants
would be able to consolidate the memory representation
to some extent before switching their attention to the
processing activity. In contrast, in a second condition, the
processing activity was presented immediately following
the presentation of each memory item, thus minimising
 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
any opportunity for consolidation of the memory represen-
tation prior to completing the processing activity. Impor-
tantly, this condition also included a delay interval to
equate the overall duration of the tasks, but this was pre-
sented after the processing activity and before the next
memory item. If the process of consolidation is important
for working memory, then performance should be better
in the condition that provides an opportunity for this to
occur prior to the presentation of the processing activity.
To address our second aim of differentiating between
consolidation, rehearsal and attentional refreshing, we
controlled the opportunity that participants had to engage
in each of these processes and examined whether this
influenced any effects attributed to the process of consoli-
dation. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the opportunity
participants had for attentional refreshing by varying the
difficulty of the processing activity. Within the Time-Based
Resource Sharing (TBRS) model of Barrouillet et al. (2004,
2007, 2011), the ‘cognitive load’ of a given working mem-
ory task is defined as the proportion of the total task time
during which the processing activity occupies attention
and as a consequence, prevents attentional refreshing of
the memory items. In support of this claim, Barrouillet
et al. (2004, 2007) have shown that more difficult process-
ing tasks take longer to complete (thus purportedly
decreasing the time available for attentional refreshing
and increasing the cognitive load of the task) and result
in poorer working memory performance. In Experiment
2, we used a different manipulation of processing diffi-
culty, and in Experiment 3, we blocked articulatory rehear-
sal by requiring participants to complete the tasks under
articulatory suppression. In all experiments, the manipula-
tions of processing difficulty were crossed with the manip-
ulation varying the opportunity for consolidation
described above to create four working memory tasks. This
enabled us to examine whether any effects of consolida-
tion were evident independently of any effects of atten-
tional refreshing and/or articulatory rehearsal. A final
experiment was also conducted to provide more direct evi-
dence of the involvement of a process of short-term con-
solidation in working memory span performance.
Experiment 1
Experiment 1 was designed to examine whether short-
term consolidation is important for performance on a typ-
ical working memory span task by systematically varying
the opportunity for consolidation. Processing difficulty,
and therefore, the cognitive load of the task, was also
manipulated, allowing us to investigate whether consoli-
dation and attentional refreshing are separate processes.
By manipulating processing difficulty, we were also able
to address the question of whether memory traces that
have had time to consolidate are more resistant to interfer-
ence, as suggested by the results of Barrouillet et al. (2013).
The continuous operation span task used by Lépine et al.
(2005) was modified in this experiment to include a
manipulation of the position of the processing activity,
which was presented either immediately after the presen-
tation of the memory item (immediate condition), or after
37
a blank delay interval (delayed condition). This manipula-
tion was combined with the manipulation of processing
difficulty used by Camos et al. (2009, Experiment 1) to vary
the opportunity for attentional refreshing, and thus, the
cognitive load of the memory task. This processing diffi-
culty manipulation involved either reading or performing
simple mathematical calculations.
It was hypothesised that allowing time for consolida-
tion would be beneficial for working memory performance,
resulting in better performance in the delayed processing
position condition overall. In addition, if consolidation pro-
vides a protective effect for memory items against interfer-
ence from the concurrent processing task, then any effect
of processing difficulty may be moderated by the position
of the processing task. That is, memory items that have had
more opportunity for consolidation may be less affected by
an increase in the difficulty of the processing task. Further
to this, our experimental design allowed for consolidation
and attentional refreshing to be disentangled. If consolida-
tion and attentional refreshing are separable processes, it
was expected that there would be main effects of both pro-
cessing difficulty and processing position, reflecting the
influence of attentional refreshing and consolidation,
respectively. However, if short-term consolidation is not
important for working memory and performance can be
best explained in terms of attentional refreshing, only a
main effect of processing difficulty would be expected, as
the time available for attentional refreshing overall
remained constant across both levels of processing
position.
Method
Participants
Sixty-two undergraduate university students (18
males) aged between 17 and 52 years (mean age = 20.53 -
years) participated in the study. Participants received
either course credit or a small payment for participation.
Tasks and procedure
Working memory tasks. Four working memory tasks were
created by crossing two levels of processing difficulty
(easy, difficult) with two levels of processing position
(immediate, delayed). Each working memory task involved
the recall of lists of letters in the same order that they were
presented. The pool of letter stimuli comprised 18 conso-
nants (all consonants excluding Y, W, and Q). Lists were
between three and seven letters in length, with four trials
completed at each length, for a total of 20 trials for each
working memory task. An additional three practice trials
were presented at the beginning of each working memory
task, all with a length of two items. Letter stimuli were ran-
domly selected without replacement for each trial. Experi-
mental trials were presented in a randomised order for
each participant. The presentation of the letters was inter-
spersed with the processing task, which involved either
reading digits aloud (easy condition) or performing simple
calculations aloud (difficult condition). All working mem-
ory tasks were computerised and presented using the Rev-
olution Dreamcard programme.
38 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
Each trial of the working memory tasks began with a
fixation cross presented in the centre of the computer
screen for 750 ms, followed by a letter presented in Arial
font approximately 30 mm in height, which the partici-
pants were required to read aloud. This letter was pre-
sented for 500 ms, followed by a blank screen for 200 ms
and a variable delay interval before the processing task.
In the delayed condition, a blank screen was presented
for a further 2400 ms before presentation of the first pro-
cessing item, while in the immediate condition, the first
processing item was presented directly following the
200 ms inter-stimulus interval, with no delay. Participants
then completed the processing task. A single digit between
1 and 9 inclusive was displayed in the centre of the screen,
followed by the consecutive presentation of two simple
operations randomly selected for each trial (i.e., +1, 1,
+2, or 2). These digits were the same size as the letters,
but presented in colour, alternating between red and green
for each successive operation. Each digit or operation was
presented for 1000 ms, with an inter-stimulus interval of
200 ms, during which the screen was blank. Participants
were required to read the initial number aloud, and then
perform the calculations presented, for example, ‘‘4, plus
2 is 6, minus 1 is 5’’. In the easy condition, the answer to
the arithmetic problem was presented next to the opera-
tion, so participants only needed to read what was on the
screen (i.e., 4, +2, 6, 1, 5). In the difficult condition, the
answer was not presented, and participants needed to per-
form the calculations themselves. Responses to the arith-
metic problems in the difficult conditions were recorded
by the experimenter. Following the processing task was a
second variable delay (2400 ms in the immediate condi-
tion, and 0 ms in the delayed condition), before the next
letter in the trial was presented. This second delay ensured
that the overall time for each trial remained constant
across conditions. The storage and processing sequence
was repeated between three and seven times, depending
on trial length. Immediately following the trial, partici-
pants were presented with a screen containing all possible
letters, and were asked to verbally recall the letters in the
same order that they were presented. The experimenter
clicked on the corresponding letters as they were recalled,
with letters recalled accurately and in the correct serial
position scored as correct. The proportion of letters
recalled correctly was calculated for each task.
Procedure. Participants completed all tasks over two ses-
sions with two working memory tasks completed in each
session. Tasks were counterbalanced across participants,
with the restriction that a participant complete tasks of
the same difficulty level within the same session. Partici-
pants were instructed that both parts of the working mem-
ory task (i.e., remembering the letters and reading/
performing the calculations) were equally important.
Results
Data screening
Participants were screened based on their performance
on the processing task for the difficult conditions, that is,
participants were awarded one point for each trial where
they achieved perfect performance on the processing task
(for a maximum score of 20). Two participants (one male,
one female) were excluded from the analysis for poor per-
formance on the processing task, more than three standard
deviations below the mean for the sample. The remaining
60 participants had a mean age of 20.52 years, and ranged
from 17 to 52 years old.
Data analysis
Means and standard errors for the four working mem-
ory tasks are presented in Fig. 1. A 2  2 repeated measures
ANOVA with the factors of processing position (immediate,
delayed) and processing difficulty (easy, difficult) revealed
significant main effects of processing position,
F(1, 59) = 4.24, p = .04, gp2 = .067, with better performance
in the delayed condition (M = .51 and .54 for the immediate
and delayed conditions respectively), and processing diffi-
culty, F(1, 59) = 62.04, p < .01, gp2 = .513, with poorer per-
formance in the difficult processing condition (M = .59
and .45 for the easy and difficult conditions respectively).
No significant interaction was found, F(1, 59) = 0.97,
p = .33, gp2 = .016.
Discussion
Results from this first experiment showed that both the
processing difficulty and processing position manipula-
tions affected performance on the working memory task.
Higher processing demands in the difficult processing con-
dition resulted in lower memory performance, and provid-
ing a delay directly after the presentation of the to-be-
remembered item (i.e., before the subsequent processing
activity) resulted in better memory performance. This sec-
ond result is consistent with the concept of short-term
consolidation described by Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua
(1998), as providing a delay directly after the presentation
of the storage items, and thus allowing time for these items
to be consolidated, did result in better memory perfor-
mance (see also, Nieuwenstein & Wyble, 2014). The finding
that the manipulations of processing position and process-
ing difficulty – though both significant – did not interact,
0.8 Easy
Difficult
Proportion Correct
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
Immediate Delayed
Processing Position
Fig. 1. Mean proportion of items correctly recalled for each working
memory task formed by crossing processing position (immediate,
delayed) with processing difficulty (easy, difficult). Error bars represent
standard errors.
 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
suggests that the processes of consolidation and atten-
tional refreshing are separate. According to Barrouillet
et al. (2011), the cognitive load of a task depends on the
ratio of the time during which the processing activity cap-
tures attention to the total processing time available, with
more executively demanding processing tasks requiring
attention for longer. In the current experiment, this cogni-
tive load ratio remained constant regardless of the position
of the processing activity (i.e., immediate or delayed), and
was only affected by the difficulty of the processing task.
Nevertheless, a main effect of processing position was
found, with a delay immediately following the storage
items resulting in better overall working memory perfor-
mance relative to if the same delay was presented after
the presentation of the processing items. If the opportunity
for attentional refreshing was the only factor affecting
working memory performance, we would not expect to
find this main effect of processing position, as the opportu-
nity for refreshing was the same in both processing posi-
tion conditions. Thus, the results of the current study
strongly suggest that the process of consolidation is sepa-
rate from attentional refreshing and constrains perfor-
mance on working memory span tasks.
In terms of the process of consolidation itself, memory
traces that have been consolidated are assumed to be in
some way ‘protected’ from interference from other infor-
mation subsequently entering the cognitive system (e.g.,
see Nieuwenstein & Wyble, 2014). While this could poten-
tially explain the better memory performance in the
delayed processing position conditions overall, if the mem-
ory items were indeed more resistant to interference due
to being consolidated, then one would expect to see a
reduced effect of processing difficulty in the delayed condi-
tions. This was not evident. Items in the delayed conditions
suffered the same degree of memory decrement from the
increase in processing difficulty as items in the immediate
conditions that had not had a chance to be consolidated.
One potential explanation for this is that the manipulation
of processing difficulty that we used may not have actually
increased the amount of interference experienced because
participants were required to name the same items in each
condition and so, the number of interfering events was the
same. Thus, it could be argued that the real difference
between the two conditions was that in the difficult condi-
tion, participants were required to generate their own
answers, and so, the time available for refreshing would
have been reduced in this condition relative to the easy
condition. This is consistent with suggestion of
Barrouillet et al. (2013), that memory traces that have
had a longer time to consolidate are more resistant to
interference from distractors, but are still susceptible to
increases in attentional demand. Thus, while providing
an opportunity for consolidation in a working memory
span task did lead to better memory performance, consis-
tent with a consolidation account, the consolidated mem-
ory traces were still susceptible to increases in
attentional demand.
However, at this point, it is worth noting that the pre-
dicted reduction in the effect of processing difficulty fol-
lowing an opportunity for consolidation may have been
masked due to certain aspects of the methodology used
39
in our initial experiment. For example, the processing com-
ponent of the working memory task used was very fast
paced, faster even than the ‘fast paced’ condition in the
very similar processing task used by Camos et al. (2009).
That being the case, it is possible that the memory traces
did enjoy some degree of protection from subsequent
interference as a result of being consolidated, but that
any evidence of this protection was obliterated by the
intensely demanding processing activity.
A second aspect to consider was that the delay interval
for the delayed processing position condition was rela-
tively long at 2400 ms, compared to the maximum
1600 ms interval used by Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua
(1998). A 2400 ms interval was used to ensure that all par-
ticipants completing the delayed processing position con-
ditions had time to consolidate the information
presented. However, it is possible that this interval was
also long enough to encourage rehearsal of the memory
items, either overtly or covertly. There was anecdotal evi-
dence to suggest that this was the case, at least for some
participants. If participants were able to use verbal rehear-
sal during the delay interval, this adds a possible confound
to these conditions in that rehearsal of the memory items
straight after their presentation (i.e., the delayed process-
ing position condition) might have been more beneficial
for memory than rehearsal of the memory items following
completion of the processing activity (i.e., the immediate
processing position condition), when the memory traces
may have either decayed or been overwritten to some
extent. Thus, while the opportunity for rehearsal (and for-
getting) was the same in both processing position condi-
tions, in reality, early rehearsal may have been more
useful than late rehearsal. These concerns were addressed
in the following two experiments.
Experiment 2
In Experiment 2, four working memory tasks were cre-
ated by crossing two levels of processing position (imme-
diate, delayed) with two levels of a pace manipulation
(fast, slow) in which a simple digit naming task was pre-
sented at either a fast or slow pace (cf. Barrouillet et al.,
2004). A pace manipulation was used in this experiment
rather than a difficulty manipulation, because it enabled
the use of simpler processing stimuli and thus, a more
straightforward manipulation of the attentional refreshing
involved in the task. The use of the same processing activ-
ity (i.e., reading digits) in both the fast and slow paced con-
ditions also allowed for a comparison of performance on
the processing component of the task, across the manipu-
lations of both pace and processing position. According to
the TBRS model, there is less opportunity for attentional
refreshing when participants are required to complete pro-
cessing items at a fast pace. Thus, we expected a main
effect of pace such that memory performance would be
poorer in the fast paced condition. In addition, in this
experiment, the length of the delay interval presented
either directly after the memory item or after the process-
ing activity was reduced to 1000 ms. This was done to
reduce the opportunity for participants to engage in
40 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
articulatory rehearsal, while still providing an opportunity
for consolidation to occur. In line with Experiment 1, we
expected that providing participants with an opportunity
to consolidate their memory directly after the presentation
of the stimulus would lead to better memory performance.
Furthermore, if attentional refreshing and consolidation
are separable processes, as was suggested in Experiment
1, then we would expect both the pace (slow or fast) and
processing position (immediate or delayed) manipulations
to affect recall performance on the working memory task
independently.
Having said this, if the process of consolidation does in
some way insulate the memory representation from inter-
ference from subsequent information entering the cogni-
tive system (e.g., Nieuwenstein & Wyble, 2014), then the
effect of pace should be reduced in the delayed processing
position conditions compared to the immediate processing
position conditions. Although the manipulation of pace is
not a difficulty manipulation per se, reading the presented
digits at a fast pace is more difficult (Barrouillet et al.,
2004), and recent modelling investigations of this effect
have suggested that presenting processing items at a fast
pace might act to reduce the time available for other pro-
cesses that offset interference, resulting in greater interfer-
ence in this condition (Oberauer, Lewandowsky, Farrell,
Jarrold, & Greaves, 2012). Although this predicted interac-
tion was not evident in Experiment 1, it was thought that
employing a simpler processing task might enable some
evidence of this protective effect to emerge. Having said
this, if the lack of an interactive effect is replicated in this
experiment, this would advance our understanding of the
nature of the consolidation process thought to be operating
within the short time-frame associated with working
memory. Participants’ accuracy in the processing task
was also analysed to assess for any effects of processing
position on processing performance.
Method
Participants
Sixty-nine undergraduate Psychology students (24
males) aged between 17 and 52 years (mean age = 21.37 -
years) participated in the study. Participants received
credit points or a small payment in return for taking part
in the experiment.
Tasks and procedure
Working memory tasks. Working memory tasks were cre-
ated by crossing two levels of processing pace (fast, slow)
with two levels of processing position (immediate,
delayed). As in Experiment 1, all working memory tasks
involved recalling lists of letters in the same order that
they were presented. In this case, lists were between two
and six letters in length, with 20 trials in total (four at each
list length). In addition to these, three practice trials were
given at the beginning of each working memory task, with
a list length of two memory items. As for Experiment 1, the
order of presentation of the experimental trials was ran-
domised for each participant. The presentation of the let-
ters was interspersed with a processing task, which
involved reading single digits as they appeared at a fixed
rate. Digits used were between one and nine inclusive,
and the letters used were the same as in Experiment 1.
Items were selected randomly without replacement for
each trial (for the letters) or memory item (for the digits).
All working memory tasks were computerised and pre-
sented using the Revolution Dreamcard programme.
Each trial began with the presentation of a fixation
cross in the centre of the computer screen for 750 ms, fol-
lowed by a letter presented in black Arial font approxi-
mately 30 mm in height. This letter was presented for
500 ms, and followed by a blank screen for a delay interval
of 100 ms for the immediate conditions, and 1000 ms in
the delayed conditions. After the delay interval the pro-
cessing task began, which involved the presentation of
six individual digits, in red Arial font, also approximately
30 mm in height and presented in the centre of the com-
puter screen. Each digit was presented for 500 ms, with
an inter-stimulus-interval of 100 ms for the fast condi-
tions, and 500 ms for the slow conditions. Directly follow-
ing the presentation of the final digit of each processing
set, a blank screen was presented for 1000 ms in the imme-
diate conditions and 100 ms in the delayed conditions to
keep the overall length of the immediate and delayed ver-
sions constant.
Following each trial, participants were presented with a
screen containing all possible letters, and were required to
recall the letters in the same order that they were pre-
sented, by clicking on them using the computer mouse.
Responses were scored by calculating the proportion of let-
ters recalled accurately in the correct serial position.
Fluid reasoning tasks. The Ravens Standard Progressive
Matrices – Plus Version was administered using the stand-
ardised instructions, with participants given a 20 min time
limit to complete as many items as possible.1
Procedure. Participants completed all tasks over two ses-
sions with two working memory tasks completed in each
session. Task presentation was counterbalanced across
participants. Participants were instructed that both parts
of the working memory task (i.e., remembering the letters
and reading the digits correctly) were equally important.
Following the working memory tasks in the second ses-
sion, participants completed the Raven’s Standard Progres-
sive Matrices – Plus Version.
Results
Data screening
Participants were screened on their performance in the
processing task. Performance on the processing task was
calculated by determining the number of trials (out of
20) in which the participant correctly named all digits as
they were presented on the computer screen. This process-
ing score was calculated for each working memory task
separately, and any participants with a score more than
three standard deviations below the mean were excluded
1
The Raven’s Matrices were included for the purpose of comparing
participants across Experiments 2 and 3.
 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
from all subsequent analyses, as they were deemed to have
not completed the task correctly. Two female participants
were excluded on the basis of their processing perfor-
mance. The remaining 67 participants had a mean age of
21.37 years, with a range of 17–52 years.
Data analysis
Descriptive statistics for all working memory variables
are presented in Fig. 2. Results for the Ravens Progressive
Matrices showed a mean score of 39.31 with standard
deviation 4.52. A 2 (processing position: immediate,
delayed)  2 (pace: fast, slow) repeated-measures ANOVA
was conducted on recall accuracy. This revealed significant
main effects of processing position, F(1, 66) = 14.75, p < .01,
gp2 = .18, with better performance in the delayed condition
(M = .55 and .61 for the immediate and delayed conditions
respectively), and of pace, F(1, 66) = 58.06, p < .01, gp2 = .47,
with poorer performance in the fast pace condition
(M = .63 and .54 for the slow and fast paced conditions
respectively). No significant interaction was found,
F(1, 66) = 0.53, p = .47, gp2 = .01. Further to this, an analysis
of accuracy on the processing task was conducted to inves-
tigate any differences between the conditions in perfor-
mance on the processing task. A 2 (processing position:
immediate, delayed)  2 (pace: fast, slow) repeated-mea-
sures ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of pace,
F(1, 66) = 20.47, p < .01, gp2 = .24, with poorer performance
in the fast paced condition (M = .98 and .94 for the slow
and fast paced conditions respectively), but no significant
effect of processing position, F(1, 66) = 0.62, p = .43,
gp2 = .01, and no significant interaction between pace and
processing position, F(1, 66) = 2.00, p = .16, gp2 = .03.
Experiment 2
(no articulatory suppression)
0.8
Recall task
0.6
0.4
0.2
Proportion correct
Immediate
1.0
Processing task
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
Immediate
Fig. 2. Mean proportion of items correct for the recall task and mean proportion of trials correct for the processing task in each condition with standard
error bars for Experiments 2 and 3.
41
Discussion
The results from Experiment 2 are consistent with the
findings from Experiment 1. Decreasing the opportunity
for attentional refreshing by increasing the pace of the pro-
cessing activity did lower recall performance, consistent
with the findings of Barrouillet and colleagues
(Barrouillet et al., 2004; Camos et al., 2009). However, pro-
viding a delay interval directly after presentation of the
storage items improved memory recall performance, con-
sistent with a process of consolidation. These findings can-
not easily be explained in terms of a trade-off between the
memory and processing components as performance on
the processing activity was high (>90% in all conditions)
and unaffected by processing position. Additionally, as in
Experiment 1, providing an opportunity for consolidation
in the delayed conditions did not fully protect recall from
an increase in attentional demand as the effect of process-
ing pace was comparable across both the immediate and
the delayed processing conditions. Thus, the processes of
consolidation and attentional refreshing appear to be sep-
arable and both appear to be important for working mem-
ory performance.
Even with the reduced opportunity for articulatory
rehearsal in this experiment, it is still possible that some
participants were able to rehearse during the delay inter-
val, and that this may have contributed to the improved
performance on the delayed conditions of the working
memory task. That is, the effect of processing position in
Experiments 1 and 2 may reflect the beneficial effect of
articulatory rehearsal performed early in the trial rather
than any true effect of consolidation. Having said this,
Experiment 3
(articulatory suppression)
0.8
Slow
Fast
0.6
0.4
0.2
Delayed Immediate Delayed
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
Delayed Immediate Delayed
Processing position
42 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
Stevanovski and Jolicoeur (2007, Experiment 3) showed
that consolidation functions similar to those observed in
the earlier work of Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua (1998) were
evident even when participants were required to perform
an articulatory suppression task, suggesting that the con-
solidation and rehearsal of information involves separable
processes (see also, Sun, Zimmer, & Fu, 2011, though it is
unclear in their paradigm whether they are measuring
basic encoding, consolidation or a combination of the
two). Moreover, Camos et al. (2009) and Jarrold et al.
(2011) have shown that independently manipulating par-
ticipants’ ability to engage in articulatory rehearsal and
attentional refreshing produces separable effects on mem-
ory performance. Taken together, these studies suggest the
possibility of three independent processes that contribute
to the maintenance of verbal information in working mem-
ory, namely, attentional refreshing, articulatory rehearsal,
and consolidation. Experiment 3 was designed to investi-
gate this possibility in the current experimental paradigm,
by impeding participants’ ability to engage in articulatory
rehearsal through the use of articulatory suppression. If
providing a delay interval immediately following the pre-
sentation of each storage item is beneficial for memory
performance, even when rehearsal is blocked by articula-
tory suppression, this will provide further support for the
independence of the consolidation process from rehearsal
processes, and the importance of memory consolidation
for working memory performance.
Experiment 3
In Experiment 3, participants completed the same four
working memory tasks as in Experiment 2. However, in
this experiment, we blocked articulatory rehearsal by hav-
ing participants engage in articulatory suppression during
the blank delay intervals that occurred between the pre-
sentation of the memory item and the processing activity
in the delayed conditions, and between the presentation
of the processing activity and the next memory item in
the immediate conditions. If the enhanced memory perfor-
mance evident in the delayed conditions of the previous
experiments is due to the beneficial effect of early rehear-
sal (as opposed to rehearsal performed after the presenta-
tion of the processing activity when the memory traces
may have become degraded), then the memory advantage
for the delayed processing position conditions should be
eliminated in this experiment. If, however, consolidation
and articulatory rehearsal are separable processes, then
we should replicate the pattern of performance evident
in Experiment 2. Participants’ accuracy on the processing
task was again analysed to assess any effects of processing
position on processing performance.
Method
Participants
Forty undergraduate Psychology students (10 males)
aged between 17 and 30 years (mean age = 19.85 years)
participated in this study. All students received credit
points or a small payment in return for taking part in the
experiment.
Tasks and procedure
The tasks and procedure for this study were identical to
those used in Experiment 2, with the exception that artic-
ulatory suppression was also completed during each work-
ing memory task. This additional articulatory suppression
task required participants to repeat ‘Monday, Monday’ in
the 1000 ms delay period either immediately before or
immediately after the processing task, depending on the
processing position condition. Working memory tasks
and the Ravens Standard Progressive Matrices – Plus Ver-
sion were administered according to the procedure
described in Experiment 2.
Results
Data screening
Participants were screened on the basis of their perfor-
mance on the processing task, as in Experiment 2. Follow-
ing this procedure, three female participants were
excluded from subsequent analyses on the basis of their
processing performance. The remaining 37 participants
had a mean age of 19.69 years, with a range of 17 years
to 30 years.
Data analysis
Descriptive statistics for all working memory variables
are presented in Fig. 2. Performance on the Raven’s Pro-
gressive Matrices task for these participants resulted in a
mean score of 38.89 with a standard deviation of 5.81. A
2 (processing position: immediate, delayed)  2 (pace:
fast, slow) repeated-measures ANOVA conducted on recall
accuracy revealed a significant main effect of processing
position, F(1, 36) = 15.66, p < .01, gp2 = .303, with better
performance in the delayed condition (M = .43) than the
immediate condition (M = .36), but no significant effect of
pace, F(1, 36) = 1.56, p = .22, gp2 = .042, and no significant
interaction between processing position and pace,
F(1, 36) = 0.04, p = .85, gp2 = .001. An analysis of accuracy
on the processing tasks revealed significant main effects
of pace, F(1, 36) = 13.09, p < .01, gp2 = .267, with better per-
formance in the slow pace condition (M = .92 and .86 for
the slow and fast paced conditions respectively), and pro-
cessing position, F(1, 36) = 17.86, p < .01, gp2 = .332, with
better performance in the delayed condition (M = .85 and
.93 for the immediate and delayed conditions respec-
tively). There was no significant interaction between pro-
cessing position and pace, F(1, 36) = 1.99, p = .17, gp2 = .052.
Cross-group comparison
The performance of the participants in Experiments 2
and 3 was compared to investigate the overall effect of
articulatory suppression, processing position and pace on
working memory performance. To ensure that there was
no difference in the ability of the two groups, performance
on the Ravens Progressive Matrices was compared across
experiments, with no significant difference found,
t(102) = 0.41, p = .682. Following this, a 2 (experimental
group: no articulatory suppression (Experiment 2), articu-
latory suppression (Experiment 3))  2 (pace: fast,
slow)  2 (processing position: immediate, delayed) mixed
ANOVA was conducted. This revealed a significant main
 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
effect of experimental group, F(1, 102) = 39.07, p < .01,
gp2 = .277, with poorer performance when articulatory
suppression was required (M = .58 and .40 for Experiment
2 and Experiment 3 respectively). Significant main effects
were also found for pace, F(1, 102) = 26.51, p < .01,
gp2 = .206 (M = .52 and .46 for the slow and fast pace con-
ditions respectively), and processing position,
F(1, 102) = 28.17, p < .01, gp2 = .216 (M = .46 and .52 for
the immediate and delayed conditions respectively). The
only significant interaction effect found was between
experimental group and pace, F(1, 102) = 7.43, p < .01,
gp2 = .068. As already shown above, increasing the pace
of the processing activity had a detrimental effect on mem-
ory performance for the participants in Experiment 2 who
were not engaging in articulatory suppression. The same
increase in pace had no reliable effect on the memory per-
formance of participants in Experiment 3 who were engag-
ing in articulatory suppression, even though overall
memory performance for this group was poorer than that
of participants in Experiment 2, indicating that articulatory
suppression was having an effect.
Discussion
Consistent with Experiments 1 and 2, the findings from
this third experiment again showed that providing a delay
after the presentation of each memory item resulted in
better memory performance relative to when the same
delay interval was provided after the presentation of the
processing activity. Importantly, the beneficial effect of
providing a delay after each memory item was evident
even though participants were engaging in articulatory
suppression during the delay intervals in this experiment,
and thus, their ability to rehearse the memory items was
severely restricted. This provides strong evidence to sug-
gest that the enhanced memory performance observed in
the delayed condition of this experiment, and the previous
two experiments, is due to participants having the oppor-
tunity to consolidate their memory before completing the
processing component of the task, and is not due to a ben-
eficial effect of rehearsal performed directly after presenta-
tion of the memory item (as opposed to rehearsal
performed after the processing activity). Articulatory sup-
pression did reduce memory performance overall, indicat-
ing that the manipulation was effective and that rehearsal
processes appear to contribute to performance on these
working memory tasks. However, the finding that the
effect of processing position was unaffected by the intro-
duction of articulatory suppression suggests that the pro-
cesses involved in rehearsal and consolidation are
independent (cf. Stevanovski & Jolicoeur, 2007; Sun et al.,
2011).
Surprisingly, in this experiment, the pace manipulation
did not affect memory performance. This is inconsistent
with the results of Experiments 1 and 2, and also with
the findings of many previous studies (e.g., Barrouillet
et al., 2004; Camos et al., 2009). The fact that the concur-
rent performance of articulatory suppression eliminated
the effect of pace could be taken to suggest an overlap in
the mechanisms or resources required for articulatory
rehearsal and attentional refreshing. However, given the
43
previous evidence to the contrary (Camos et al., 2009;
Tam et al., 2010), this seems unlikely. Instead, it is possible
that by requiring participants to perform articulatory sup-
pression during the delay interval, we have increased the
cognitive load of the task to the point where retention
duration becomes important and the longer retention
duration in the slow paced condition has reduced the recall
advantage usually evident in this condition (see Barrouillet
et al., 2004, p. 90, for a description of the conditions under
which such an effect might occur). Further research is
needed to clarify the limits of the effect of processing pace
on working memory performance.
Additional evidence to support a process of consolida-
tion comes from performance on the processing activity
of the working memory task. Participants were more accu-
rate on the processing task in the delayed processing posi-
tion condition than the immediate condition. This is
consistent with the idea that individuals in the immediate
condition were still engaged with consolidating the mem-
ory item when the processing activity was presented,
resulting in impaired performance on the digit naming
task. Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua (1998) found similar evi-
dence of an impairment in Task 2 accuracy when Task 1
required the encoding of a memory item (i.e., their Exper-
iment 7), however, these effects were highly variable and
were only evident at the shortest SOAs in their study.
Given that the effects of processing position on processing
accuracy were also variable in the current experiments
(i.e., no significant effect in Experiment 2), further research
is required to determine the nature and extent of any
effects that consolidating information has on the accuracy
of subsequent processing. Nonetheless, taken together, the
results of Experiments 2 and 3 suggest that the process of
consolidation is separable from both the process of rehear-
sal and attentional refreshing, and that all three are impor-
tant for working memory performance.
Experiment 4
Experiments 1–3 have shown a beneficial effect of pro-
viding a blank delay interval after the presentation of each
memory item, which we have interpreted as evidence of a
consolidation process. However, it could be argued that the
timings that we have used in our experiments are rela-
tively long compared to the timings used by Jolicoeur
and Dell’Acqua (1998) to assess short-term consolidation.
In their experiments, Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua showed that
the consolidation of a single letter appeared to be largely
complete between 500 and 700 ms post-stimulus onset.
In our experiments, in the immediate conditions, each let-
ter was presented for 500 ms followed by a 100 or 200 ms
blank delay interval before the onset of the processing
activity (these timings, though brief for a working memory
span task, were chosen to try to capture the consolidation
process whilst still ensuring some generalisability to other
working memory tasks). Consequently, it could be argued
that any consolidation would be complete prior to the
onset of the processing activity, even in our immediate
conditions. The final experiment was designed to address
this question.
44 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
In Experiment 4, participants completed a serial recall
task with an auditory choice RT task (judging whether a
presented tone was high or low in pitch) inserted between
each presentation of a memory item. Consistent with the
paradigm used by Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua (1998), the
tones were presented at varying delay intervals following
the presentation of each memory item, and participants
were required to respond as quickly as possible to the
tones without sacrificing accuracy on the tone judgement
task. If participants are still consolidating the memory item
when the tone is presented, then we should see reaction
time functions consistent with those demonstrated by
Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua (1998). That is, reaction times to
the tone should be slower when the interval between the
offset of the memory item and the presentation of the tone
is short, and should become faster as this delay interval
increases. However, if consolidation is already complete
by the time that the tones are presented, then reaction
times should be unaffected by variation in the delay inter-
val between presentation of the memory item and the
tone. By examining these reaction time functions across
serial position, we will also be able to address the question
of what happens to these reaction time functions as the
number of items maintained in memory increases, which
will provide a better understanding of the processes that
are operating within a working memory task.
Method
Participants
Twenty-one undergraduate university students (9
males) aged between 17 and 28 years (mean age = 19.24 -
years) participated in the study. Participants received
either course credit or a small payment for participation.
Task and procedure
The serial recall task involved remembering lists of let-
ters and responding to an auditory choice RT task pre-
sented after each letter. Each trial began with the
presentation of a fixation cross in the centre of the com-
puter screen for 1000 ms, followed by a letter presented
in black Arial font approximately 22 mm in height for
500 ms. Following a variable delay interval of either 50,
150, 350, 750 or 1550 ms post stimulus offset, a tone that
was either high (1000 Hz) or low (500 Hz) in pitch was pre-
sented for 100 ms and participants were required to decide
if it was low or high and respond by pressing the ‘A’ and ‘L’
keys respectively, as quickly as possible but without mak-
ing mistakes. The inter-letter interval was fixed at
3550 ms. This ensured that there was adequate time to
respond to the tone at the longest delay interval and that
the overall duration of each trial was the same for all par-
ticipants. At the end of each trial, participants were pre-
sented with a screen containing all possible letters and
were asked to verbally recall the letters in the same order
that they were presented. The experimenter recorded their
responses and entered them into the computer. Responses
were scored by calculating the proportion of letters
recalled accurately in each serial position. In addition, par-
ticipants were required to complete articulatory suppres-
sion throughout each trial by repeating the word
‘‘Monday’’ continuously from the onset of the fixation cross
until they were asked to recall.
The letter stimuli were the same as in the previous
experiments and were randomly selected without replace-
ment for each trial. Each trial was five letters in length,
with a total of 50 trials. An additional four practice trials
were presented at the beginning of the task. The delay
interval that followed the presentation of each letter was
randomised with the constraint that each of the five delay
intervals was used once within each trial, and each delay
interval was presented an equal number of times in each
serial position. There were an equal number of high and
low tones presented for each delay interval in each serial
position. The tones were presented through Sennheiser
headphones at a clearly audible level. The task was pro-
grammed using LiveCode and presented using a standard
computer and monitor.
Results
Data screening
Participants were screened based on their recall accu-
racy performance. One female participant was removed
on this basis as their recall accuracy was less than 20%,
which was more than 2.5 standard deviations below the
mean for the sample. Reaction times for correct responses
on the tone task were trimmed to remove any responses
greater than 2000 ms as this was the maximum time
allowed for responses at the longest delay interval. These
responses were coded as a timed-out error. Each partici-
pant’s individual reaction times were then assessed for
outliers for each delay interval at each serial position with
none identified. Accuracy on the tone task was also evalu-
ated with all participants performing above 70%. The
remaining 20 participants had a mean age of 19.30 years,
with a range of 17–28.
Data analysis
Mean RTs for the tone task are presented in Fig. 3. A
clear reduction in RTs with increasing delay interval is evi-
dent. This was confirmed by a 5 (serial position)  5 (delay
interval) repeated measures ANOVA, which revealed a sig-
nificant main effect of delay interval, F(4, 76) = 16.40,
p < .01, gp2 = .463 (M = 813.73, 799.86, 770.65, 748.79 and
718.51 for the 50, 150, 350, 750 and 1550 ms delay inter-
vals respectively), a significant main effect of serial posi-
tion, F(4, 76) = 8.55, p < .01, gp2 = .310 (M = 768.60, 722.50,
755.31, 793.62 and 811.50 for serial positions 1–5 respec-
tively), and no significant interaction (p > .10). Follow-up
contrasts revealed no significant difference between the
50 and 150 ms delay intervals (p > .10), but a significant
reduction in RTs from 150 to 350 ms, F(1, 19) = 11.96,
p < .01, gp2 = .386, from 350 to 750 ms, F(1, 19) = 4.79,
p = .04, gp2 = .201, and from 750 to 1550 ms,
F(1, 19) = 5.00, p = .04, gp2 = .208. For serial position, con-
trasts showed that RTs were significantly faster for the sec-
ond serial position relative to the first, F(1, 19) = 5.83,
p = .03, gp2 = .235, but then showed a progressive slowing
with slower RTs for the third serial position relative to
the second, F(1, 19) = 9.64, p < .01, gp2 = .337, the fourth
serial position relative to the third, F(1, 19) = 15.80,
 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50 45

950 for a process of short-term consolidation. Importantly, we

Serial Position 1
have demonstrated that similar RT functions are evident
Serial Position 2
over longer time frames such as those used in the current
Serial Position 3 experiment, where each memory item was presented for
Mean Reaction Time (ms)

Serial Position 4
850
Serial Position 5
750
650
0 another intriguing finding, namely, that RTs increased
0 500 1000 1500 2000
Delay Interval
Fig. 3. Mean reaction time to tones presented at each delay interval for
each serial position in Experiment 4. Error bars are omitted for clarity.
p < .01, gp2 = .454, and no significant difference between
the last two serial positions (p > .10).
Descriptive statistics for accuracy on the tone task are
presented in Table 1. A 5 (serial position)  5 (delay inter-
val) repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant main
effect of serial position, F(4, 76) = 3.44, p = .01, gp2 = .153,
but no significant main effect of delay interval and no sig-
nificant interaction (all p > .10). Follow-up contrasts
showed that accuracy was better for the second serial posi-
tion (.97) relative to the first (.94), F(1, 19) = 6.69, p = .02,
gp2 = .260, but no other significant differences between
subsequent serial positions were evident (all p > .10).
Descriptive statistics for recall accuracy are also presented
in Table 1 and show a typical serial position curve.
500 ms and RTs were still decreasing up to 1550 ms post-
stimulus offset. This suggests that the process of consolida-
tion may be operating over a longer time period than orig-
inally proposed by Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua (1998). Indeed,
in the more recent study by Stevanovski and Jolicoeur
(2007, Experiment 3), RTs to a secondary tone task pre-
sented at varying intervals following a memory item con-
tinue to decrease between 500 and 1600 ms post-
stimulus onset, similar to the findings of the present exper-
iment. Moreover, by combining the paradigm used by
Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua (1998) with a serial recall task
to create a novel working memory task, we have revealed
across serial position (with the exception of the first posi-
tion), but without an interaction with delay interval. While
the slower RTs evident for the first serial position may
reflect a cost associated with initiating a task set at the
beginning of each trial, the overall increase in RT across
the remaining serial positions suggests there is also a cost
of maintaining information in memory. Crucially though,
serial position did not interact with delay interval, suggest-
ing that the processes associated with initiating a task set
and maintaining items in memory are separable from
those involved in consolidating memory items. Finally, as
participants completed articulatory suppression through-
out the task, the findings from this experiment provide fur-
ther support for the separability of consolidation from the
process of articulatory rehearsal. Thus, we have demon-
strated that RT functions consistent with a process of
short-term consolidation are evident at the item presenta-
tion times used in Experiments 1–3, which provides con-
verging evidence to support the interpretation of the
effects of processing position demonstrated in the previous
experiments in terms of a process of consolidation.

Discussion
The results from Experiment 4 show a clear pattern of
decreasing RTs as the delay interval between the presenta-
tion of the memory item and the tone increases. This find-
ing is consistent with those reported by Jolicoeur and
colleagues (Jolicoeur & Dell’Acqua, 1998; Stevanovski &
Jolicoeur, 2007), which they have argued provide support
General discussion
The current experiments were designed to investigate
whether short-term memory consolidation contributes to
performance on working memory span tasks. In addition,
we aimed to differentiate between consolidation and two
previously identified processes that contribute to the

Table 1
Mean proportion correct and standard deviations for recall accuracy across serial position and tone accuracy for each delay interval across serial position.

Variables Serial position

1 2 3 4 5
M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD
Recall accuracy .87 .12 .82 .14 .71 .18 .62 .18 .64 .19
Tone accuracy
50 .92 .02 .98 .01 .95 .02 .97 .02 .97 .01
150 .95 .02 .97 .01 .95 .02 .95 .02 .93 .03
350 .94 .02 .95 .02 .97 .01 .97 .01 .93 .03
750 .93 .03 .97 .01 .98 .01 .95 .02 .97 .02
1550 .95 .02 .98 .01 .96 .02 .98 .01 .95 .02
46 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
maintenance of verbal information in working memory,
namely rehearsal and attentional refreshing. In three
experiments, we demonstrated that presenting a blank
delay interval directly after the presentation of the mem-
ory item and before the onset of the processing activity
produced enhanced memory performance relative to when
the same delay interval was presented after participants
had completed the processing activity. The pattern of per-
formance observed across experiments suggests that post-
encoding processes have a beneficial effect on working
memory span performance, and is consistent with the pro-
cess of short-term consolidation described by Jolicoeur and
Dell’Acqua (1998; see also Nieuwenstein & Wyble, 2014;
Ricker & Cowan, 2014). Importantly, the finding of an effect
of processing position in these experiments is novel and
provides a challenge to a number of models of working
memory.
A second novel finding from this study is that whatever
post-encoding processes are operating during the delay
interval appear to be separable from the processes
involved in articulatory rehearsal. When the opportunity
for participants to engage in rehearsal of the memory
items was blocked by the imposition of articulatory sup-
pression, the beneficial effect of consolidation remained
and was of a similar magnitude to the previous experi-
ments that did not require articulatory suppression. These
results are consistent with the findings of Stevanovski and
Jolicoeur (2007) showing that the consolidation functions
evident in Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua (1998) remain even
when participants engage in an articulatory suppression
task to minimise any verbal recoding and rehearsal, and
provide support for the claim of Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua
(1998) that short-term consolidation is not synonymous
with rehearsal.
Another intriguing finding from this study is that the
post-encoding processes operating during the delay inter-
val also appear to be separable from attentional refreshing.
There were effects of processing difficulty (Experiment 1)
and processing pace (Experiment 2), indicating that the
manipulation of cognitive load, which in turn varies the
opportunity for attentional refreshing, was successful in
affecting performance. However, in Experiments 1–3, the
beneficial effect of providing an opportunity for consolida-
tion was unaffected by the manipulation of cognitive load.
Moreover, providing an unfilled delay interval immedi-
ately following the presentation of the storage item led
to better memory performance than providing the same
unfilled delay interval after the processing activity, even
though the cognitive load of these two conditions was
identical. Of course, it could be argued that maintenance
activities performed prior to the processing activity may
be more beneficial than maintenance activities performed
after the processing activity because memory traces will
have deteriorated more in the latter case. In relation to
articulatory rehearsal, we would argue that the findings
of Experiment 3 provide strong evidence against this sug-
gestion because when rehearsal was blocked in this exper-
iment, the same pattern of superior recall in the delayed
processing position condition was observed. Furthermore,
although the findings from these experiments do not allow
us rule out this possibility with respect to attentional
refreshing, even if participants were able to engage in
some form of maintenance activities during the delay
intervals, whether that be attentional refreshing or articu-
latory rehearsal, we believe the pattern of results is not
consistent with such an argument.
For example, let us assume that in the delayed process-
ing position condition, participants were able to maintain
the memory item, either through refreshing or rehearsal,
with a high level of fidelity until the onset of the processing
activity, at which point the memory trace underwent a cer-
tain amount of forgetting while the participant was
engaged in the processing activity. This would be the final
activation level for this item as the next memory item
would then be presented. In the immediate condition,
memory traces would begin from the same starting level
of activation and would suffer the same degree of loss dur-
ing the processing activity, however, in this condition par-
ticipants would then have the delay interval to refresh the
memory trace before the presentation of the next memory
item. Consequently, and paradoxically, this argument
would have to predict either no difference between the
two processing position conditions (in the case when the
memory trace could not be reactivated after the processing
activity because it was too degraded), or better perfor-
mance in the immediate condition (in the case where the
memory trace could be reactivated). The results from the
current experiments are clearly not consistent with such
a view. Together, the results of these experiments there-
fore suggest that there may be three mechanisms involved
in the maintenance of verbal information in working mem-
ory: articulatory rehearsal, attentional refreshing, and a
separate mechanism, which we believe may be responsible
for the initial consolidation of information into working
memory.
While we have interpreted the beneficial effect of pro-
viding a blank delay interval after the presentation of each
memory item as evidence of a consolidation process, there
may be other potential explanations of this effect. For
example, it could be argued that providing a blank delay
interval directly after the memory item allowed more time
for sensory encoding. Saults and Cowan (2007) showed that
interrupting sensory encoding through the use of postper-
ceptual masks led to poorer performance on visual and
auditory array comparison tasks. However, Turvey (1973)
showed that the identification of trigrams was no longer
affected by postperceptual masks presented approximately
200 ms post-stimulus onset. Thus, we assume that the
stimulus presentation times used in the current series of
experiments would have provided ample time for the sen-
sory encoding of single letters. Moreover, Nieuwenstein
and Wyble (2014) recently showed that whereas the con-
solidation of a visual stimulus was disrupted by the presen-
tation of an attentionally demanding secondary task (i.e., a
2-alternative forced choice task; 2-AFC), it was unaffected
by the presentation of a mask. Taken together, these studies
provide converging evidence that the effect of processing
position evident in the present study is most likely due to
the disruption of a later stage of processing, such as consol-
idation. However, this in itself raises the question of
whether the stimulus presentation times that we have used
are so long that any consolidation would be complete prior
 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
to the onset of the processing activity. Contrary to this
suggestion, Experiment 4 clearly demonstrated that RT
functions comparable to those used by Jolicoeur and
Dell’Acqua (1998) to argue for a process of short-term con-
solidation were evident with the stimulus presentation
times used in the current experiments (see also,
Nieuwenstein and Wyble (2014) who showed that the pro-
cess of consolidation was still susceptible to disruption by a
2-AFC task for several hundred milliseconds after the stim-
ulus was masked). This suggests that the consolidation of a
single item may take longer than originally thought
(Jolicoeur & Dell’Acqua, 1998; see also, Stevanovski &
Jolicoeur, 2007, Experiment 3). Thus, although consolida-
tion is almost certain to be underway by the time the pro-
cessing activity is presented in our immediate conditions,
the findings from Experiment 4 equally provide strong evi-
dence to suggest that it would not be complete by this time.
Another potential alternative explanation of the effect
of processing position evident in Experiments 1–3 is that
the positioning of the blank delay interval in the delayed
condition allowed more time for individuals to switch from
encoding (and perhaps also consolidating) the memory
items to completing the processing activity in this condi-
tion relative to the immediate condition. Oberauer and
Lewandowsky (2014) showed that response times to the
first of a series of sequential processing items were signif-
icantly longer than response times to subsequent process-
ing items (see also, Jarrold et al., 2011; Vergauwe et al.,
2014), which they attributed to a task-switch cost. They
then argued that if performing a task-switch demands
attentional resources, this would lead to a momentary
surge in the cognitive load of the task at the point when
individuals were required to initiate the processing task.
Thus, the better memory performance evident in the
delayed conditions of our experiments could, potentially,
be explained by a temporary increase in the cognitive load
of the task when participants are required to switch to the
processing activity, which is more easily accommodated in
the delayed condition than the immediate condition. How-
ever, there are a number of reasons to believe that task-
switching may not be an issue of concern in the current
experiments. First, in all experiments, participants were
required to name the memory items, which were letters,
and then name the processing items, which were digits.
Arguably, any task-switch involved in switching from
naming letters to naming digits would be minimal. Indeed,
in their seminal paper on the dynamics of task-switching,
Allport, Styles, and Hsieh (1994, Experiment 4) showed
that after the first few trials, alternating between naming
the attributes of two different stimuli (i.e., words and dig-
its) did not incur a task-switch cost. Thus, any task-switch
costs occurring in the current experiments are likely to be
small at best.
Second, in the tasks used in Experiments 1–3, partici-
pants were required not only to switch from encoding to
processing, but also from processing to encoding the next
memory item. In terms of memory performance, if per-
forming a task switch is detrimental, it is reasonable to sug-
gest that the most damaging task switch is likely to be from
processing to encoding the subsequent memory item in the
delayed condition, rather than from encoding to processing
47
in the immediate condition, and so, we should see poorer
performance in the former case. The pattern of results does
not support this suggestion. Third, it could be argued that
making a task-switch to a more difficult task should be
more demanding (cf. Arbuthnott, 2008) and so, we might
expect to see a larger effect of delay in the difficult as
opposed to the easy processing condition of Experiment 1.
This would be evident as a measurable interaction between
processing difficulty and processing position, but this was
not observed. Finally, it could be argued that participants
were required to complete additional task-switching in
Experiment 3 as they were required to switch to perform-
ing the articulatory suppression task and then to complet-
ing the processing task (or vice versa depending on the
processing position condition). This means that even in
the delayed processing position condition of Experiment
3, participants would have been required to perform a
task-switch immediately following the presentation of the
memory item, and yet, this did not affect the magnitude
of the processing position effect in Experiment 3 or indeed,
across Experiments 2 and 3. Thus, it appears that a number
of aspects of the data are not consistent with an explanation
in terms of task-switching.
Importantly, however, even if we accept the possibility
of a task-switch cost on the first processing item, this does
not impact on our explanation of the beneficial effect of
providing a delay interval after the presentation of each
memory item in terms of a process of consolidation.
Assuming that there is a momentary surge in cognitive
load at the start of each processing activity, then this
would presumably have its effect on the previous memory
item by drawing attentional resources away from, or inter-
fering with, some post-encoding process operating imme-
diately after stimulus offset. We have already
demonstrated that these post-encoding processes are unli-
kely to be articulatory rehearsal or attentional refreshing
and so, we would argue that the most plausible candidate
is a process of consolidation.
Implications for models of working memory
The results of the current experiments have important
implications for a number of models of working memory.
Although Barrouillet et al. (2013) acknowledged a possible
role for consolidation, they have yet to explicitly incorpo-
rate this process into their TBRS model or the mathemati-
cal function governing the trade-off between processing
and storage in working memory (cf. Barrouillet et al.,
2011). However, given that the description of the process
of consolidation given by Jolicoeur and Dell’Acqua (1998)
shares many similarities with the attentional refreshing
mechanism described by Barrouillet et al. (2004, 2007,
2011) in that both are thought to engage a central atten-
tional bottleneck and both processes act to strengthen
the memory trace, it would be more parsimonious if the
current results could be explained in terms of a single pro-
cess responsible for both. Indeed, in a recent computa-
tional instantiation of the TBRS, Oberauer and
Lewandowsky (2011) included a processing rate variable
that governed the speed of both encoding and refreshing,
with differences in the overall duration of the two pro-
48 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
cesses achieved by setting different criterion levels for
required learning strength. Thus, in this model, a single
parameter was used for both consolidation and refreshing.
One other difference between encoding and refreshing in
this model is that refreshing is contingent on the retrieval
of the to-be-refreshed item, whereas encoding is not. To
the extent that retrieval for refreshing is error-prone, this
could potentially explain the advantage of an early over a
late free-time period evident in the present results.2 How-
ever, we feel that this suggestion is subject to the same line
of reasoning that we have used above to argue against the
suggestion that that attentional refreshing performed prior
to the processing activity may be more beneficial than atten-
tional refreshing performed after the processing activity. As
Oberauer and Lewandowsky (2011) did not simulate the
effect of varying encoding strength (which is presumably
the way in which the model would simulate an interruption
to the process of consolidation), or the effect of varying the
position of the processing activity within the inter-item
interval, it remains to be seen whether this model would
be able to produce effects similar to the experimental data
presented here.
Nonetheless, even if a single attentional activation pro-
cess is responsible for both consolidation and refreshing, it
is clear that varying the opportunity for this activation to
occur in relation to the initial encoding of memory items
affects memory independently of varying the opportunity
for this activation to occur in relation to refreshing the
memory items once they have been encoded. That is, the
exact time point at which an opportunity for activation is
provided within the working memory span paradigm is
important for memory performance. These findings indi-
cate that in order to provide a full account of working
memory span performance, the TBRS model of Barrouillet
et al. (2004, 2007, 2011) needs to be modified to take into
account the temporal parameters associated with the ini-
tial encoding of memory items as well as those associated
with the maintenance of items.
More recently, Oberauer et al. (2012) put forward an
alternative computational model (SOB-CS) that explains
working memory span performance without reference to
decay and/or attentional refreshing mechanisms. SOB-CS
instead explains working memory capacity limits in terms
of interference that occurs due to the superposition of
associations in a distributed neural-network. In this model,
distractors create interference by being encoded into
working memory and being associated with the memory
item preceding the distractor. The strength of encoding of
both memory items and distractors is determined by both
the amount of time that attention is devoted to the item/
distractor, and the novelty of the item/distractor. To pre-
vent working memory from becoming cluttered, SOB-CS
also incorporates a mechanism responsible for the removal
of distractors from memory. Distractor removal occurs
during any free time that is available following encoding
of the distractor. Thus, longer time intervals following
the presentation of a distractor item will enable that dis-
tractor to be removed more effectively, resulting in less
2
We would like to thank Klaus Oberauer for this suggestion.
interference with the preceding memory item. This would
lead to the prediction that performance should be better in
the immediate conditions of Experiments 1–3 in the cur-
rent study as these conditions would provide maximal
time for distractor removal after presentation of the dis-
tractors. This was not the pattern of performance observed.
Moreover, while the strength of memory encoding in this
model is a time-dependent process, and therefore consis-
tent with the notion of consolidation described in the cur-
rent study, the instantiation reported in Oberauer et al.
(2012) assumed that encoding strength would be maximal
after approximately 500 ms, and so, it remains to be seen
whether SOB-CS can reproduce the pattern of effects
reported in Experiments 1–3 that operate over a longer
time scale. Of course, it is possible that mechanisms asso-
ciated with both consolidation of the memory traces and
distractor removal may be involved in working memory
span performance. The extent to which evidence consis-
tent with the operation of either mechanism is apparent
in behavioural results may depend on the balance of these
processes within any given task. Notably, evidence consis-
tent with the importance of consolidation is clearly dem-
onstrated in the current experiments.
The current results also appear not to be fully consistent
with a temporal distinctiveness account of memory (e.g.
Brown, Neath, & Chater, 2007). According to temporal dis-
tinctiveness models, memory items are partly represented
in terms of their locations along a temporal dimension in
psychological space. Memory traces of items that are pre-
sented close in time to one another are crowded along this
temporal dimension and, consequently, are more difficult
to discriminate from one another at the point of retrieval
than temporally isolated items, resulting in poorer
memory performance (Brown et al., 2007). A number of
studies have shown evidence of temporal isolation effects
(e.g. Brown, Morin, & Lewandowsky, 2006; Geiger &
Lewandowsky, 2008; Neath & Crowder, 1996), however,
these effects are typically reduced and often non-signifi-
cant in paradigms that require forward serial recall
(Morin, Brown, & Lewandowsky, 2010). In the current
study, a delay was presented either immediately after the
presentation of each memory item (delayed condition) or
immediately before the presentation of the following
memory item (immediate condition), both of which should
have led to a similar degree of temporal isolation for the
memory items. However, a memory advantage was found
in the condition where the delay was presented immedi-
ately following the presentation of the memory item, sug-
gesting that the post-item interval is more important for
memory performance than the pre-item interval. This find-
ing is difficult to accommodate in terms of a temporal dis-
tinctiveness account. However, having said that, it must be
acknowledged that the current experiments did use a
closed pool of memory items and used the repetition of a
single distractor to block rehearsal in Experiment 3, two
conditions that have been suggested to mask temporal
isolation effects in serial recall tasks (Morin et al., 2010).
Nevertheless, this argument does not discount the fact
that a significant effect of post-item interval was found
in the current experiments, consistent with a process of
consolidation.
 D.M. Bayliss et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 81 (2015) 34–50
Implications for models of short-term consolidation
These findings also have implications for understanding
the nature of the consolidation process itself and the
attentional constraints on performance. Jolicoeur and
Dell’Acqua (1998) have argued that short-term consolida-
tion requires central mechanisms and that while consolida-
tion processes are engaged, any concurrent processing that
also requires central mechanisms will either be postponed
or slowed due to some form of capacity-sharing. In the cur-
rent study, memory performance was impaired when the
processing activity was presented immediately following
the presentation of the memory item (see also,
Nieuwenstein & Wyble, 2014). It is difficult to see how this
could be explained by an attentional bottleneck model in
which the processing of the second task is postponed until
the first task is completed (cf. Jolicoeur & Dell’Acqua, 1998).
According to these models, manipulating the onset of Task
2 should not affect Task 1 performance, as Task 1 should
have access to the attentional bottleneck first (Tombu &
Jolicœur, 2003). The fact that we see effects of distractor
processing (Task 2) on memory performance (Task 1) that
are moderated by the timing of the onset of the distractor
processing activity suggests that these two components of
the task are not processed in a strict serial fashion. An alter-
native explanation is that the allocation of attention to each
component of the task is under strategic control such that
individuals may switch their attention away from consoli-
dation to focus on the processing activity. This would effec-
tively interrupt the consolidation process resulting in a
weaker memory trace that is susceptible to interference
from incoming information, and consequently, poorer
memory performance. This explanation would seem to fit
well with the TBRS model discussed above.
Alternatively, the current results could also, potentially,
be accounted for by a central capacity sharing model such
as that proposed by Tombu and Jolicœur (2003). In this
model, the processing required for both Task 1 and Task 2
proceeds in parallel, but any central processing required
by each task must share the available processing capacity,
which is limited. When the delay between the two tasks
is short, there is an increase in the duration during which
the two tasks must share the available resources, which
leads to costs in performance on both tasks (Tombu &
Jolicœur, 2003). Importantly, the proportion of the avail-
able resources allocated to each task can vary and may be
influenced by task demands such that virtually all of the
shared capacity could be allocated to one of the tasks if
the task demands encouraged this. This form of graded
capacity-sharing could account for the fact that effects of
processing position on processing accuracy were seen in
Experiment 3, but not Experiment 2, as well as the effects
of processing position on memory performance evident
across all experiments. That is, when the distractor activity
was presented immediately following the presentation of
the memory item, participants may have shared their avail-
able resources between consolidating the memory item
and performing the distractor task. This is likely to have
interfered with the consolidation of the memory items,
either in terms of the fidelity of the representation that
was formed or the strength with which it was encoded,
49
and also performance on the processing activity. Although
the present results cannot be used to distinguish between
a graded capacity-sharing and task-switching account of
central attentional processing, which is an important ave-
nue for future research, they do provide a challenge to
attentional bottleneck models that hold the assumption
that Task 2 processing is postponed until Task 1 processing
is complete (see also, Nieuwenstein & Wyble, 2014, for fur-
ther evidence against a central attentional bottleneck
model of this form). The present results also provide further
evidence that attentional limits place important constraints
on working memory capacity.
Conclusions
In conclusion, we have demonstrated that providing an
opportunity for consolidation immediately following the
presentation of each memory item in a working memory
span task leads to better working memory performance.
Moreover, the beneficial effect of providing an opportunity
for consolidation was independent of manipulations of pro-
cessing difficulty, processing pace, and articulatory suppres-
sion. These results suggest that the mechanisms underlying
the consolidation of information into working memory are
separable from the mechanisms underlying attentional
refreshing and articulatory rehearsal and indicate that the
temporal parameters associated with consolidating infor-
mation into working memory need to be acknowledged as
an important factor that contributes to working memory
performance and incorporated into current models of work-
ing memory. Furthermore, the current results highlight the
importance of manipulating or controlling the opportunity
for consolidation when designing experiments involving
working memory span paradigms as variation in the time
allowed for consolidation can lead to differences in working
memory performance that may mask the influence of other
variables on working memory. Finally, the results of these
experiments may have practical implications in terms of
assisting those with working memory problems to improve
their working memory performance, which would be of
great benefit to educators and clinicians alike.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Australian Research
Council (ARC) Discovery Project DP0988288 and a Small
Research Grant from the University of Western Australia
awarded to Donna Bayliss and Christopher Jarrold.
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