Behavioral facilitation and increased brain responses from a high interference working memory context.

ABSTRACT: Many real-life situations require flexible behavior in changing environments. Evidence suggests that anticipation of conflict or task difficulty results in behavioral and neural allocation of task-relevant resources. Here we used a high- and low-interference version of an item-recognition task to examine the neurobehavioral underpinnings of context-sensitive adjustment in working memory (WM). We hypothesized that task environments that included high-interference trials would require participants to allocate neurocognitive resources to adjust to the more demanding task context. The results of two independent behavioral experiments showed enhanced WM performance in the high-interference context, which indicated that a high-interference context improves performance on non-interference trials.

SUBMITTER: Samrani G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6193025 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature