Adaptive encoding speed in working memory

Humans can adapt when complex patterns unfold at a faster or slower pace, for instance when remembering a grocery list that is dictated at an increasingly fast pace. Integrating information over such timescales crucially depends on working memory, but although state-of-the-art theories assume that working memory capacity can be flexibly adapted, these theories assume that encoding speed cannot. In a series of experiments, we found that humans encoded at a faster rate when they were adapted to overall and recent rate of incoming information. Interestingly, our participants were unable to use explicit cues to speed up encoding, even though these cues were more informative than statistical information. Our findings suggest that adaptive tuning of encoding speed in working memory is a fundamental but largely implicit mechanism underlying our ability to keep up with the pace of our surroundings.