Refreshing is effective and can take place spontaneously in working memory, but is unlikely to play a key role in keeping information in mind.

Abstract

Working memory allows us to keep information readily available and accessible over brief periods of time, so that the information can be used for ongoing cognition when it is no longer present in the immediate environment. The amount of information that can be held in working memory is limited, and this has important implications. One prominent theoretical proposal is that the limited capacity of working memory stems from the limited amount of information that can be reactivated before it is lost from working memory, through a reactivation mechanism known as refreshing. Following this proposal, refreshing is a key determinant for working memory capacity. The present study aimed to test this hypothesis extensively. Our reasoning was that, if refreshing is a key determinant of working memory capacity, then we should be able to detect (a) the consequences of instructed refreshing and (b) the spontaneous use of refreshing across a variety of memory materials and task conditions. This would demonstrate the effectiveness and the general, spontaneous use of refreshing, respectively. Across a set of experiments using verbal, spatial, and visual materials in an item recognition task, we showed that refreshing mostly results in increased accessibility for the refreshed information when its use is instructed, thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of refreshing. However, the inconsistent spontaneous use of refreshing across materials and task conditions was not in line with a general role of refreshing in keeping information in mind. Therefore, refreshing is unlikely to be a main determinant of working memory capacity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).