Abstract
Previous stimuli influence present perceptual decisions even when these stimuli are currently task-irrelevant, causing serial dependence effects. Similarly, task-relevant information concurrently held in working memory also influences perceptual decisions, causing memory interference effects. At present, no comprehensive comparisons of serial dependence and memory interference are available that highlight their commonalities and differences. In this study we compared serial dependence and memory interference using openly available data from a collection of experiments of continuous-response working memory tasks and present new experimental results inspired by these analyses. Our results demonstrate that perceptual decisions are simultaneously affected by several biases with distinguishable characteristics. Behavioral responses reproducing memorized targets were influenced by concurrently maintained contents of working memory as well as by features of target and non-target stimuli presented before. The previous-trial target influenced responses most strongly, followed by an influence of within-trial non-targets. Previous-trial non-targets had a relatively small but significant influence. Our comparative and meta-analytical approach based on an open science database can serve to inform theories and models of serial dependence and working memory interference, isolating their differences, highlighting their commonalities, and generating new hypotheses. Supplementary material is available at https://osf.io/sv926/?view_only=03b1ac1135b548349b319fbaa4cea8e7