Accessing the contents of visual short-term memory (VSTM) is compromised by information bottlenecks and visual interference between memorization and recall. Retro-cues, displayed after the offset of a memory stimulus and prior to the onset of a probe stimulus, indicate the test item and improve performance in VSTM tasks. It has been proposed that retro-cues aid recall by transferring information from a high-capacity memory store into visual working memory (multiple-store hypothesis). Alternatively, retro-cues could aid recall by redistributing memory resources within the same (low-capacity) working memory store (single-store hypothesis). If retro-cues provide access to a memory store with a capacity exceeding the set size, then, given sufficient training in the use of the retro-cue, near-ceiling performance should be observed. To test this prediction, 10 observers each performed 12 hours across 8 sessions in a retro-cue change-detection task (40,000+ trials total). The results provided clear support for the single-store hypothesis: retro-cue benefits (difference between a condition with and without retro-cues) emerged after a few hundred trials and then remained constant throughout the testing sessions, consistently improving performance by two items, rather than reaching ceiling performance. Surprisingly, we also observed a general increase in performance throughout the experiment in conditions with and without retro-cues, calling into question the generalizability of change-detection tasks in assessing working memory capacity as a stable trait of an observer (data and materials are available at osf.io/9xr82 and github.com/paulzerr/retrocues). In summary, the present findings suggest that retro-cues increase capacity estimates by redistributing memory resources across memoranda within a low-capacity working memory store.

访问视觉短期记忆 (VSTM) 的内容受到信息瓶颈和记忆和回忆之间的视觉干扰的影响。在记忆刺激偏移之后和探测刺激开始之前显示的回溯提示指示测试项目并提高 VSTM 任务的性能。有人提出，通过将信息从高容量记忆存储转移到视觉工作记忆（多存储假设），回溯线索有助于回忆。或者，追溯线索可以通过在相同（低容量）工作记忆库（单一存储假设）内重新分配记忆资源来帮助回忆。如果回溯线索提供对容量超过设定大小的记忆存储的访问，那么，在对回溯线索的使用进行充分培训后，应该观察到接近天花板的性能。为了测试这一预测，10 名观察者每人在 8 个会话中执行了 12 小时的复古线索变化检测任务（总共 40,000 多次试验）。结果为单店假设提供了明确的支持：在数百次试验后出现了回溯提示的好处（有和没有回溯提示的条件之间的差异），然后在整个测试过程中保持不变，持续提高两个项目的性能，而不是达到天花板性能。令人惊讶的是，我们还观察到在有和没有回溯线索的情况下整个实验中的表现普遍提高，质疑变化检测任务在评估作为观察者稳定特征的工作记忆能力方面的普遍性（数据和材料可用）在 osf.io/9xr82 和 github.com/paulzerr/retrocues）。总之，