Flexible memory interplays: selective reactivation of long-term memories in working memory
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Working memory is defined as the online storage space for ongoing tasks. It stores both newly encoded information and retrieved long-term memories. However, there is a growing amount of work to suggest that long-term memories can also guide behavior. This raises the question: Why do humans invest metabolic resources in reactivating long-term memories in working memory instead of guiding behavior directly via long-term memory? We conducted six experiments examining working memory reactivation of long-term memories in anticipation of task demands encompassing protection against interference, behavioral guidance, and adaptation to novel settings. Using behavioral and electrophysiological indices, we measured the extent to which long-term memories are reactivated in working memory in anticipation of these task demands relative to the anticipation of a recognition task, which constituted a baseline. Compared to this baseline, we found equal memory reactivation when anticipating perceptual interference and dual-task interference, and less memory reactivation when anticipating attentional guidance. On the other hand, reactivation was stronger for task switching, contextual changes, and performing mental operations. These results suggest that the reactivation of long-term memories in working memory is not primarily for protection against interference or behavioral guidance. Instead, stronger reactivation occurs when there is a need to update the memories themselves (i.e., perform a mental operation) or the settings in which they are used (i.e., the task rules and the context). This insight implies that the goal of reactivating long-term memories in working memory may be to facilitate adaptation to novel situations. Our research challenges influential memory models and recent empirical work that consider working memory as the default buffer for retrieved long-term memories and instead highlights a flexible and dynamic interplay between long-term memories and working memory.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".