Short-term memory capacity is determined by long-term memory representations

Several studies have described the attentional bottleneck and tried to explore the nature of the limitation in short-term memory (e.g., Luck & Vogel, 1997). Most notably whether short-term memory limitations are feature- or object-based, and while alternate models add to the debate, most seem to omit the possible role of familiarity and expertise. In a range of behavioral studies, we investigate how attentional selection and encoding into short-term memory are modulated by prior expertise and the degree of familiarity.

Sørensen & Kyllingsbæk (2012) demonstrate that memory capacity is modulated by expertise in a change detection design of various age groups ranging from children to adults, this is later replicated by Dall, Watanabe, & Sørensen (2016) in three groups of adults with varying degrees of knowledge to Japanese, and finally processing of Chinese characters are explored in a whole-report design revealing that familiarity solely drives processing over character complexity (Dall, Wang, Cai, Chan, & Sørensen, 2021).

Across several studies we demonstrate the dynamics of how familiarity and expertise gradually tune mental representations involved in perceptual processing and attentional selection (see also Brogaard & Sørensen, in press), suggesting that long-term memory representations play a pivotal role in both attentional selection and the encoding into short-term memory.