Sophie Portrat

Université Grenoble Alpes

It is well known that working memory performance changes with age. Two recent computational models of working memory, TBRS* and SOB-CS, developed from young adults WM performances are opposed regarding the postulated causes of forgetting, namely time-based decay and interference for TBRS* and SOB-CS, respectively. In the present study, these models...

Working memory is usually defined in cognitive psychology as a system devoted to the simultaneous processing and maintenance of information. However, although many models of working memory have been put forward during the last decades, they often leave underspecified the dynamic interplay between processing and storage. Moreover, the account of the...

According to the time-based resource-sharing model (P. Barrouillet, S. Bernardin, & V. Camos, 2004), the cognitive load a given task involves is a function of the proportion of time during which it captures attention, thus impeding other attention-demanding processes. Accordingly, the present study demonstrates that the disruptive effect on concurr...

Recent studies have suggested that long-term retention of items studied in a working memory span task depends on the refreshing of memory items-more specifically, on the number of refreshing opportunities. However, it was previously shown that refreshing depends on the cognitive load of the concurrent task introduced in the working memory span task...

Although the study of metamemory monitoring originated in predictions for simple span tasks, the study of metacognition for working memory (WM) has been somewhat neglected in comparison with long-term memory. We aimed to fill this gap by exploring the ability to self-assess WM operations. Thirty-four participants performed 16 series of complex span...

Introduction The TBRS*C computational model provides a mathematical implementation of the cognitive processes involved in complex span tasks. The logic of the core processes, i.e., encoding, refreshing/time-based decay and chunking, is based on Hebbian learning, synaptic facilitation, and long-term neural plasticity, respectively. The modeling, how...

Stroke is the main cause of acquired disability in adults, and specific deficits in working memory (WM) are among the most common cognitive consequences. In neuropsychological routine, WM is most of the time investigated in the framework of the multicomponent model (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974, The psychology of learning and motivation, 47). Using a mor...

Compression, the ability to recode information in a denser format, is a core property of working memory (WM). Previous studies have shown that the ability to compress information largely benefits WM performance. Importantly, recent evidence also suggests compression as freeing up WM resources, thus enhancing recall performance for other, less compr...

It is now firmly established that long-term memory knowledge, such as semantic knowledge, supports the temporary maintenance of verbal information in Working Memory (WM). This support from semantic knowledge is well-explained by models assuming that verbal items are directly activated in long-term memory, and that this activation provides the repre...

The maintenance of serial order information is a core component of working memory (WM). Many theoretical models assume the existence of specific serial order mechanisms. Those are considered to be independent from the linguistic system supporting maintenance of item information. This is based on studies showing that psycholinguistic factors strongl...

Maintenance of verbal information within human working memory occurs through two main complementary mechanisms: articulatory rehearsal and refreshing. Both are well-described in the literature but very few computational models have attempted to describe the ways they interact to maintain information. Because these interactions are difficult to appr...

It is now well-established that long-term memory (LTM) knowledge, such as semantic knowledge, supports the temporary maintenance of verbal information in working memory (WM). This is for instance characterized by the recall advantage observed for semantically related (e.g. leaf-tree-branch) over unrelated (e.g. mouse-wall-sky) lists of items in imm...

Background/Study context Recent research has shown a benefit of temporally regular structure presented during the maintenance period in short-term memory for young adults. Because maintenance is impaired in aging, we investigated whether older adults can also benefit from the temporal regularities for maintenance and how their cognitive capacities...

Objectives: Refreshing, or the act of briefly foregrounding recently presented but now perceptually absent representations, has been identified as a possible source of age differences in working memory and episodic memory. We investigated whether the refreshing deficit contributes to the well-known age-related deficit for retrieving nonsemantic as...

La créativité est aujourd'hui considérée comme une ressource utile au développement personnel, professionnel et aux transformations sociétales. Consciente de cette nécessité, l'Université Grenoble Alpes a mis en place des modules de formation à la créativité avec pour objectifs de développer à la fois les compétences personnelles et collectives des...

La créativité est aujourd’hui considérée comme une ressource utile au développement personnel, professionnel et aux transformations sociétales. Consciente de cette nécessité, l’Université Grenoble Alpes a mis en place des modules de formation à la créativité avec pour objectifs de développer à la fois les compétences personnelles et collectives des...

Objectives: Numerous studies reported an age-related deficit in verbal working memory (WM). Beyond the well-established general factors of cognitive aging, the alteration of the specific WM maintenance mechanisms may account for this deficit. This paper aims to investigate the hypothesis that WM attentional maintenance is impaired with age. Metho...

There is still a strong debate in the working memory literature about the cause of forgetting, with many articles providing evidence for the existence of temporal decay and as many publications providing evidence compatible with interference being the only mechanism involved in forgetting. In order to reconcile the two views, this article describes...

Recent evidence suggests that working memory (WM) performance can be enhanced in the presence of an isochronous rhythm during the retention interval because it improves refreshing. Considering the cognitive load (CL) effect as an indicator of refreshing, the present study investigated whether an isochronous rhythm might benefit memory performance u...

Working memory is one of the most important topics of research in cognitive psychology. The cognitive revolution that introduced the computer metaphor to describe human cognitive functioning called for this system in charge of the temporary storage of incoming or retrieved information to permit its processing. In the past decades, one particular me...

Understanding the factors that make working memory (WM) traces stable over time is important because WM is the keystone of general cognitive achievement. Two views of attentional WM maintenance have been suggested to account for the long‐term retention of WM information. First, the distractors in a WM task are thought to foster the creation of epis...

Methods: Young (mean age = 21.62; SD = 2.51) and healthy older (mean age = 71.92; SD = 5.18) participants performed a complex WM task. They had to remember five images while reading three words presented after each image. We compared trials in which every word was new (inducing high interference) with trials where words were repeated (inducing low...

Recent models have proposed that maintenance in working memory is supported by attentional refreshing (Barrouillet, Portrat, & Camos, 2011). This mechanism consists in reactivating memory traces to maintain their activation over time and counteract their decay. Using a new paradigm, Vergauwe, Camos and Barrouillet (2014) reported that response time...

SOB-CS is an interference-based computational model of working memory that explains findings from simple and complex span experiments. According to the model’s mechanism of interference by superposition, high similarity between memory items and subsequently processed distractors is beneficial because the more a distractor is similar to an item, the...

Music cognition research has provided evidence for a benefit of temporally regular structures on various aspects of cognition. Recently, we showed that the presence of an isochronous auditory rhythm compared to silence benefit maintenance in short term memory of young adults whereas a non-isochronous rhythm did not. Based on this finding, the prese...

One way of maintaining information in working memory is through attentional refreshing, a process that was recently shown to be independent from verbal rehearsal. In the classical working memory complex span task, the usual assumption is that memoranda are refreshed in a cumulative fashion, starting from the first item, going in a forward order unt...

The SOB-CS computational model of working memory explains findings from simple and complex span experiments. According to the model’s mechanism of interference by superposition, high similarity between memory items and subsequently processed distractors is beneficial because the more a distractor is similar to an item, the more they share similar u...

Music cognition research has provided evidence for the benefit of temporally regular structures guiding attention over time. We have recently demonstrated that presenting an isochronous rhythm during the retention interval improves short-term memory performance (Plancher et al., under review). In the present study, we investigated whether a specifi...

Working memory (WM) is a cognitive system allowing short-term maintenance and processing of information. Maintaining information in WM consists, classically, in rehearsing or refreshing it. Chunking could also be considered as a maintenance mechanism. However, in the literature, it is more often used to explain performance than explicitly investiga...

Short-term memorization of items while performing a concurrent distracting task requires maintenance processes. The time-based resource-sharing model of working memory (Barrouillet et al. in Psychol Rev 118:175–192, 2011) and its computational version TBRS* (Oberauer and Lewandowsky in Psychon Bull Rev 18:10–45, 2011) proposed that items are refres...

Working memory capacity is limited and much work has been done for decades on estimating its value. However, if stimuli contain redundancies, compression mechanisms probably appear which change the point of view on that capacity. By means of a behavioral study and a computational simulation, we aim at showing that working memory is not just a fixed...

The sources of forgetting in working memory (WM) are a matter of intense debate: Is there a time-related decay of memory traces, or is forgetting uniquely due to representation-based interference? In a previous study, we claimed to have provided evidence supporting the temporal decay hypothesis (S. Portrat, P. Barrouillet, & V. Camos, 2008). Howeve...

The functional organization of the PFC from anterior to posterior regions reflects a hierarchy of cognitive control whereby progressively anterior sub-regions are associated with higher-order control. The present study aimed at providing behavioral evidence for two predictions issuing from this cascade model. First, even the lower-most sub-part of...

A organização funcional do córtex pré-frontal (PFC) das regiões anterior para a posterior, reflecte a hierarquia do controle cognitivo tal como as sub-regiões anteriores se associam progressivamente em rede de controle de ordem superior. Este estudo pretende trazer prova comportamental para duas previsões acerca do modelo de cascata. Em primeiro lu...

Within the time-based resource-sharing (TBRS) model, we tested a new conception of the relationships between processing and storage in which the core mechanisms of working memory (WM) are time constrained. However, our previous studies were restricted to adults. The current study aimed at demonstrating that these mechanisms are present and function...

The time-based resource-sharing model of working memory assumes that memory traces suffer from a time-related decay when attention is occupied by concurrent activities. Using complex continuous span tasks in which temporal parameters are carefully controlled, P. Barrouillet, S. Bernardin, S. Portrat, E. Vergauwe, & V. Camos (2007) recently provided...

Working memory span tasks require participants to maintain items in short term memory while performing some concurrent processing (e.g., reading, counting, problem solving). The aim of the present experiment was to contrast two hypotheses about the locus of the detrimental effect of the processing component on the maintenance of items. Does process...

EnglishWorking memory span tasks require participants to maintain items in short term memory while performing some concurrent processing (e.g., reading, counting, problem solving). The aim of the present experiment was to contrast two hypotheses about the locus of the detrimental effect of the processing component on the maintenance of items. Does...