Events

HIT Featured Talks: Beatriz Gil-Gómez de Liaño

Musatti room Department of Psychology, via Venezia 8

08.03.2017

The effects of memory load in attention: a review of studies, implications in the study of attention and new challenges


Time: 11.00-13.00
Venue: Musatti room Department of Psychology, via Venezia 8
Speaker:Beatriz Gil-Gómez de Liaño
Affiliation:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
Organization: Franca Stablum

Abstract

The effects of concurrent working memory load in attentional processes have been one of the most puzzlingissues in cognitive psychology. Studies have shown detrimental effects, no effects, and even beneficial effects of working memory load in different attentional tasks. In this presentation I will review several important studies about the effects of working memory in attention using different attentional paradigms, from the Flanker and Stroop-like task to Visual Search paradigms. I will also show preliminary results from an ongoing meta-analytical review we are working on, providing several explanations and variables that may account for part of the results found. In fact, results from other recent studies support part of those found by the ongoing meta-analysis. However, one of the conclusions of the first results of the meta-analytical study points to an important problem highly emphasized nowadays in science: the possibility of a publication bias in the field. That will lead me to show you an example of a failure to replicate an important study in the field of memory effects in Stroop-like tasks, made in collaboration with Dr. Stablum and Dr. Umiltà.I will conclude about the necessity to use replicability as an essential tool for research development, and specifically in the field here shown