The Effect Of Long-Term Memory On Working Memory: The Role Of Representation Of Similarity

The relationship between long-term memory and working memory has always been the focus of memory research.There have been two different views on this problem: one is that long-term memory and working memory are two separate and independent systems;The other is that the two are not independent or separate memory systems,but different states within the same representation.Whether long-term memory can improve working memory has long been the focus of researchers,but no consensus has been reached.In general,we use familiar objects in daily life or manipulate subjects to repeatedly learn or train an object,so as to investigate whether long-term memory has an impact on working memory.It has been found that when the same stimulus is presented repeatedly,the performance of detecting its position change is significantly improved,which indicates that the long-term memory acquired by repeated training can affect the working memory.There have been a lot of studies on the relationship between them,but there are few studies on the influence of representation similarity on working memory in long-term memory.Here,we systematically operated the similarity of memory materials and divided materials into four levels: completely similar/very similar/generally similar/completely not similar,so as to explore the influence of similarity representation in long-term memory and working memory.When we remember similar materials in long-term memory in working tasks,we take different similarity degrees as interference items.Will the representation similarity of long-term memory and working memory have an impact on our working memory tasks? And does the effect vary depending on the degree of similarity? We propose two hypotheses:(1)Similar representations in long-term memory have an impact on individual representations in working memory,and(2)the greater the degree of similarity in representations,the greater the impact.Both study 1 and Study 2 adopted the change detection paradigm of global detection.Taking small seal characters as research materials,the changes in the accuracy of working memory tasks in the group with long-term memory(experimental group)and the group without long-term memory(control group)were investigated through behavioral experiments.A mixed experimental design of 2(experimental group,control group)× 4(completely similar,very similar,generally similar,completely not similar)× 2(presentation time 1000 ms,500ms)was adopted in study 1.In the experiment,the inter-subject independent variables were the experimental group(experimental group vs control group),the intra-subject independent variables were the degree of similarity(completely similar,very similar,generally similar,completely different)and the presentation time(500ms,1000ms),and the dependent variable was the accuracy of the working memory task.The experimental group performed both long-term and working memory tasks,while the control group performed only working memory tasks.Repeated measure analysis of variance was used to analyze the accuracy,and we found that the main effect was significant in the degree of similarity,the main effect between groups was significant,the main effect of presentation time was not significant,and the interaction between groups and the degree of similarity was not significant.Under all conditions,the accuracy of the experimental group was higher than that of the control group.In study 2,a hybrid design of 2(experimental group)×4(similarity degree)×3(working memory load)was adopted.In the experiment,the inter-subject independent variables were the experimental group(experimental group vs control group),and the intra-subject independent variables were the degree of similarity(completely similar,very similar,generally similar,completely not similar)and the working memory load(2,4,6 items).The dependent variable was the accuracy of the working memory task.The experimental tasks of the experimental group and the control group are the same as those of experiment 1.Repeated measure analysis of variance was used to analyze the accuracy rate.We found that the similarity degree had significant main effect,the main effect between groups was significant,the main effect on working memory load was significant,and the interaction between the similarity degree and working memory load was significant,but the triple interaction between the similarity degree and working memory load and the experimental group was not significant.The results show that long-term memory representations similar to working memory representations can interfere with the accuracy of working memory,and this interference effect is also affected by working memory load.The number of items in different working memory loads will lead to different difficulty of working memory tasks,and the accuracy of working memory tasks will also change.Future research on the effect of representation similarity on long-term memory and working memory should increase the interference of similarity degree or improve the difficulty of working memory task.