Working memory and attentional control abilities predict individual differences in visual long-term memory tasks

Abstract

Working memory predicts cognitive abilities like fluid intelligence (gF) and source memory. This suggests these abilities depend on working memory and attentional control. When attentional resources were occupied by a secondary task, previous research shows that source memory performance is more impaired than recognition memory, implying that working memory abilities exert less influence on recognition memory performance than source memory performance. Here, we directly tested if working memory and attentional control differences predict visual recognition memory performance across four experiments (n = 841 in total). Surprisingly, we found that working memory and attentional control nearly always predicted recognition memory performance as robustly as source memory (Studies 1, 3 and 4), with the exception of when rapid presentation rates exceeded the temporal limits of attention during encoding (Study 2). Additionally, source memory and recognition memory, regardless of encoding presentation rates across experiments, remained highly correlated across individuals. Together, our findings suggest that working memory and attention control resources play a role in performance of both recognition and source memory tests of visual long-term memory.