In the present study, we examined the hypothesis that the storage interference in working memory can be removed by attention. A dual-task paradigm was employed in Experiment 1 and 2, in which participants performed a color memory task and an RSVP letter detection task concurrently. The cognitive load of the RSVP letter detection task and the storage interference caused by the RSVP letter detection task was manipulated independently. That is, the produced storage-interference difference between the low and high interference conditions was comparable between the low and high cognitive load conditions, whereas the available attentional resources were different under the two cognitive load conditions. Since there were more attentional resources in the low load condition, the removal hypothesis predicts that differences in recall performance between the low and high interference conditions should be larger in high load than in low load, i.e., there would be an interaction between load and interference. However, the results of the two experiments did not show such an interaction. In Experiment 3, we manipulated the time available for the removal mechanism to work while inducing both the storage interference and processing interference. The results showed no sign of interference removal. Thus, the present results provided solid evidence to challenge the removal hypothesis.

中文翻译：

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工作记忆中的存储干扰无法通过注意力消除

在本研究中，我们检验了工作记忆中的存储干扰可以通过注意力消除的假设。实验 1 和实验 2 采用双任务范例，参与者同时执行颜色记忆任务和 RSVP 字母检测任务。RSVP字母检测任务的认知负荷和RSVP字母检测任务引起的存储干扰是独立操纵的。也就是说，低干扰条件和高干扰条件之间产生的存储干扰差异在低认知负荷条件和高认知负荷条件下是可比较的，而在两种认知负荷条件下可用的注意力资源是不同的。由于低负载条件下有更多的注意力资源，去除假设预测高负载条件下低干扰条件和高干扰条件下的召回性能差异应该比低负载条件下更大，即负载和干扰之间存在交互作用。然而，两个实验的结果并没有显示出这种相互作用。在实验3中，我们操纵了删除机制工作的可用时间，同时引起了存储干扰和处理干扰。结果显示没有干扰消除的迹象。因此，目前的结果为挑战去除假说提供了坚实的证据。