Two maintenance mechanisms of verbal information in working memory

The present study evaluated the interplay between two mechanisms of maintenance of verbal information in working memory, namely articulatory rehearsal as described in Baddeley’s model, and attentional refreshing as postulated in Barrouillet and Camos’s Time-Based Resource-Sharing (TBRS) model. In four experiments using complex span paradigm, we manipulated the degree of articulatory suppression and the attentional load of the processing component to affect orthogonally the two mechanisms of maintenance. In line with previous neurophysiological evidence reported in the literature, behavioral results suggest that articulatory rehearsal and attentional refreshing are two independent mechanisms that operate jointly on the maintenance of verbal information. It is suggested that these two mechanisms would affect different features that result from various levels of encoding. Moreover, time parameters should be carefully considered in any study on maintenance of verbal information in working memory.