Oberauer, Klaus (University of Potsdam, Germany) - Interference in working memory


Project:	Interference in working memory
Researchers:	Klaus Oberauer, Elke Lange, and Randall W. Engle
Duration:	2001-2004
Support:	Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and TransCoopgrant from the Alexander v. Humboldt Foundation
Description:	Many theories assume that working-memory capacity is related to the ability to prevent interference. The term "interference" is often used in a purely descriptive term, however, referring to a performance reduction due to a secondary task or an increase in memory load; as an explanation of capacity limits in working memory such a concept is useless. We currently investigate experimentally and through simulations various potential mechanisms of interference: overwriting of features shared between representations, adoption of features from one representation into another, and confusion of similar representations.
Publications:	Oberauer, K., Lange, E. B., & Engle, R. W. (in press). Working memory capacity and resistance to interference. Journal of Memory & Language
	Lange, E., & Oberauer, K. (in press). Overwriting of phonemic features in serial recall. Memory

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