Processing of representations in declarative and procedural working memory

The article investigates the relation between declarative and procedural working memory (WM; Oberauer 2009). Two experiments test the assumption that representations in the two subsystems are selected for processing in analogous ways. Participants carried out a series of decisions on memorized lists of digits. For each decision they had to select declarative and procedural representations. Regarding declarative representations participants selected a memory set and a digit within this set as the input to each decision. With respect to the procedural representations they selected a task set to be applied to the selected digit and a response within that task set. We independently manipulated the number of lists and the number of tasks to be switched among (one two or three; Experiment 1) and preparation time for a list switch (Experiment 2). For three effects commonly observed in taskswitch studies analogues in declarative WM were found: list switch costs mixing costs and residual switch costs. List and task switch costs were underadditive suggesting that declarative and procedural representations are selected separately and in parallel. The findings support the hypothesis of two analogous WM subsystems. Keywords: Working memory; Task switching.