Theses and Dissertations

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9659-6368

Advisor

Moss, Jarrod

Committee Member

Pratte, Michael S.

Committee Member

Karimi, Hossein

Date of Degree

5-15-2026

Original embargo terms

Immediate Worldwide Access

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Psychology

Abstract

Attention regulates which information in working memory becomes stabilized in long-term memory. Two candidate mechanisms are attentional prioritization and attentional refreshing. Although both reliably benefit working memory, their contribution to long-term memory remains unclear. Two experiments examined this issue using an associative memory paradigm in which participants encoded image-keypress pairs, maintained them under varying conditions, and completed both working memory and unexpected cued-recall tests. Experiment 1 manipulated refreshing indirectly by varying attentional load during maintenance, whereas Experiment 2 contrasted implicit and explicitly cued refreshing. Across both experiments, prioritization consistently improved working memory performance. However, prioritization benefited long-term memory only when refreshing was explicitly encouraged. Explicit refreshing selectively enhanced retention of prioritized associations, showing that working memory benefits do not reliably extend to long-term memory without deliberate maintenance. Together, these findings show that attentional refreshing links working memory to long-term memory and that prioritization supports durable learning only with active refreshing

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