Do updating tasks involve updating? Evidence from comparisons with immediate serial recall

Updating tasks require participants to process a sequence of items, varying in length, and afterwards to
remember only a fixed number of the elements of the sequence; the assumption being that participants
actively update the to-be-recalled list as presentation progresses. However recent evidence has cast
doubt on this assumption, and the present study examined the strategies that participants employ
in such tasks by comparing the serial position curves found in verbal and visuo-spatial updating
tasks with those seen in standard serial recall tasks. These comparisons showed that even when the
same number of items are presented or recalled, participants perform less well in an updating than
a serial recall context. In addition, while standard serial position effects were observed for serial
recall, marked recency and reduced or absent primacy effects were seen in updating conditions.
These findings suggest that participants do not typically adopt a strategy of actively updating the
memory list in updating tasks, but instead tend to wait passively until the list ends before trying to
recall the most recently presented items.