The Role of Rehearsal in Working Memory

People often engage in a behavior known as rehearsal in an attempt to improve their memory. Rehearsal can be carried out by: (1) the repetition of verbal information to oneself known as articulatory rehearsal; (2) the enrichment of (verbal and non-verbal) memory traces through associations with other contents in long-term memory, i.e., elaborative rehearsal; or, (3) the use of attention to reactivate memory traces (of any type), known as attentional refreshing. In this project, our aim is to assess if and under which conditions these different forms of rehearsal improve the retention of information over the short-term (i.e., in working memory).