Working memory (WM) has limited capacity. This leaves attention with the important role of allowing into storage only the most relevant information. It is increasingly evident that attention is equally crucial for prioritizing representations within WM as the importance of individual items changes. Retrospective prioritization has been proposed to result from a focus of internal attention highlighting one of several representations. Here, we suggest an updated model, in which prioritization acts in multiple steps: first orienting towards and selecting a memory, and then reconfiguring its representational state in the service of upcoming task demands. Reconfiguration sets up an optimized perception-action mapping, obviating the need for sustained attention. This view is consistent with recent literature, makes testable predictions, and links WM with task switching and action preparation.

中文翻译：

---

在工作记忆中优先处理信息：超越持续的内部注意力

工作记忆 (WM) 的容量有限。这使注意力集中在仅允许存储最相关信息的重要作用上。越来越明显的是，随着单个项目的重要性发生变化，注意力对于在 WM 中优先考虑表示同样重要。已经提出回顾性优先排序是由于内部关注的焦点突出了几种表示之一。在这里，我们建议了一个更新的模型，其中优先级在多个步骤中起作用：首先定位并选择一个内存，然后重新配置其表示状态以服务于即将到来的任务需求。重新配置建立了优化的感知-动作映射，消除了持续关注的需要。这种观点与最近的文献一致，做出了可检验的预测，