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Bays PM, Schneegans S, Ma WJ, Brady TF. Representation and computation in visual working memory. Nat Hum Behav 2024; 8:1016-1034. [PMID: 38849647 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01871-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2022] [Accepted: 03/22/2024] [Indexed: 06/09/2024]
Abstract
The ability to sustain internal representations of the sensory environment beyond immediate perception is a fundamental requirement of cognitive processing. In recent years, debates regarding the capacity and fidelity of the working memory (WM) system have advanced our understanding of the nature of these representations. In particular, there is growing recognition that WM representations are not merely imperfect copies of a perceived object or event. New experimental tools have revealed that observers possess richer information about the uncertainty in their memories and take advantage of environmental regularities to use limited memory resources optimally. Meanwhile, computational models of visuospatial WM formulated at different levels of implementation have converged on common principles relating capacity to variability and uncertainty. Here we review recent research on human WM from a computational perspective, including the neural mechanisms that support it.
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Affiliation(s)
- Paul M Bays
- Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
| | | | - Wei Ji Ma
- Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA
| | - Timothy F Brady
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
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2
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Abstract
The body of research on visual working memory (VWM)-the system often described as a limited memory store of visual information in service of ongoing tasks-is growing rapidly. The discovery of numerous related phenomena, and the many subtly different definitions of working memory, signify a challenge to maintain a coherent theoretical framework to discuss concepts, compare models and design studies. A lack of robust theory development has been a noteworthy concern in the psychological sciences, thought to be a precursor to the reproducibility crisis (Oberauer & Lewandowsky, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 26, 1596-1618, 2019). I review the theoretical landscape of the VWM field by examining two prominent debates-whether VWM is object-based or feature-based, and whether discrete-slots or variable-precision best describe VWM limits. I share my concerns about the dualistic nature of these debates and the lack of clear model specification that prevents fully determined empirical tests. In hopes of promoting theory development, I provide a working theory map by using the broadly encompassing memory for latent representations model (Hedayati et al., Nature Human Behaviour, 6, 5, 2022) as a scaffold for relevant phenomena and current theories. I illustrate how opposing viewpoints can be brought into accordance, situating leading models of VWM to better identify their differences and improve their comparison. The hope is that the theory map will help VWM researchers get on the same page-clarifying hidden intuitions and aligning varying definitions-and become a useful device for meaningful discussions, development of models, and definitive empirical tests of theories.
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Affiliation(s)
- William Xiang Quan Ngiam
- Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Institute of Mind and Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
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3
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Cowan N, Bao C, Bishop-Chrzanowski BM, Costa AN, Greene NR, Guitard D, Li C, Musich ML, Ünal ZE. The Relation Between Attention and Memory. Annu Rev Psychol 2024; 75:183-214. [PMID: 37713810 DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-040723-012736] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/17/2023]
Abstract
The relation between attention and memory has long been deemed important for understanding cognition, and it was heavily researched even in the first experimental psychology laboratory by Wilhelm Wundt and his colleagues. Since then, the importance of the relation between attention and memory has been explored in myriad subdisciplines of psychology, and we incorporate a wide range of these diverse fields. Here, we examine some of the practical consequences of this relation and summarize work with various methodologies relating attention to memory in the fields of working memory, long-term memory, individual differences, life-span development, typical brain function, and neuropsychological conditions. We point out strengths and unanswered questions for our own embedded processes view of information processing, which is used to organize a large body of evidence. Last, we briefly consider the relation of the evidence to a range of other theoretical views before drawing conclusions about the state of the field.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nelson Cowan
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA;
| | - Chenye Bao
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA;
| | | | - Amy N Costa
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA;
| | - Nathaniel R Greene
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA;
| | - Dominic Guitard
- School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
| | - Chenyuan Li
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA;
| | - Madison L Musich
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA;
| | - Zehra E Ünal
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA;
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4
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Ngiam WXQ, Loetscher KB, Awh E. Object-based encoding constrains storage in visual working memory. J Exp Psychol Gen 2024; 153:86-101. [PMID: 37695325 PMCID: PMC10840914 DOI: 10.1037/xge0001479] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/12/2023]
Abstract
The fundamental unit of visual working memory (WM) has been debated for decades. WM could be object-based, such that capacity is set by the number of individuated objects, or feature-based, such that capacity is determined by the total number of feature values stored. The present work examined whether object- or feature-based models would best explain how multifeature objects (i.e., color/orientation or color/shape) are encoded into visual WM. If maximum capacity is limited by the number of individuated objects, then above-chance performance should be restricted to the same number of items as in a single-feature condition. By contrast, if the capacity is determined by independent storage resources for distinct features-without respect to the objects that contain those features-then successful storage of feature values could be distributed across a larger number of objects than when only a single feature is relevant. We conducted four experiments using a whole-report task in which subjects reported both features from every item in a six-item array. The crucial finding was that above-chance recall-for both single- and multifeatured objects-was restricted to the first three or four responses, while the later responses were best modeled as guesses. Thus, whole-report with multifeature objects reveals a distribution of recalled features that indicates an object-based limit on WM capacity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Edward Awh
- Department of Psychology, University of Chicago
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5
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Joe J, Kim MS. Spatial Attention in Visual Working Memory Strengthens Feature-Location Binding. Vision (Basel) 2023; 7:79. [PMID: 38133482 PMCID: PMC10748131 DOI: 10.3390/vision7040079] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2023] [Revised: 12/07/2023] [Accepted: 12/16/2023] [Indexed: 12/23/2023] Open
Abstract
There is a debate about whether working memory (WM) representations are individual features or bound objects. While spatial attention is reported to play a significant role in feature binding, little is known about the role of spatial attention in WM. To address this gap, the current study required participants to maintain multiple items in their WM and employed a memory-driven attention capture paradigm. Spatial attention in WM was manipulated by presenting an exogenous cue at one of the locations that memory items had occupied. The effects of spatial attention on attention guidance in visual search (Experiment 1) and memory performance (Experiments 1 and 2) were explored. The results show that WM-driven attention guidance did not vary based on whether the search features came from the same object in WM; instead, it depended on the number of features, regardless of their source object. In memory tasks, the cued object outperformed the uncued object. Specifically, the test item was better rejected when the features were mis-bound in the cued location than in the uncued location. These findings suggest that memory-driven attention guidance is feature-based, and spatial attention in WM helps bind features into object structures based on location.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Min-Shik Kim
- Department of Psychology, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Republic of Korea;
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6
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Forsberg A, Adams EJ, Cowan N. Why does visual working memory ability improve with age: More objects, more feature detail, or both? A registered report. Dev Sci 2023; 26:e13283. [PMID: 35611884 PMCID: PMC10029097 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13283] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/24/2020] [Revised: 03/30/2022] [Accepted: 04/29/2022] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
We investigated how visual working memory (WM) develops with age across the early elementary school period (6-7 years), early adolescence (11-13 years), and early adulthood (18-25 years). The work focuses on changes in two parameters: the number of objects retained at least in part, and the amount of feature-detail remembered for such objects. Some evidence suggests that, while infants can remember up to three objects, much like adults, young children only remember around two objects. This curious, nonmonotonic trajectory might be explained by differences in the level of feature-detail required for successful performance in infant versus child/adult memory paradigms. Here, we examined if changes in one of two parameters (the number of objects, and the amount of detail retained for each object) or both of them together can explain the development of visual WM ability as children grow older. To test it, we varied the amount of feature-detail participants need to retain. In the baseline condition, participants saw an array of objects and simply were to indicate whether an object was present in a probed location or not. This phase begun with a titration procedure to adjust each individual's array size to yield about 80% correct. In other conditions, we tested memory of not only location but also additional features of the objects (color, and sometimes also orientation). Our results suggest that capacity growth across ages is expressed by both improved location-memory (whether there was an object in a location) and feature completeness of object representations.
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Li Y, Cowan N. Constraints of attention, stimulus modality, and feature similarity in working memory. Atten Percept Psychophys 2022; 84:2519-2539. [PMID: 36123501 PMCID: PMC10039417 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-022-02549-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 08/01/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Two of the most important concepts in working memory that differentiate many theories are the role of attention and similarity between items. Investigators have debated whether there is a central, general resource of attention, and whether interference between items depends mostly on their modality and type of code (i.e., verbal/acoustic versus visual/spatial coding) or upon multiple dimensions of feature similarity even within a modality. Here, we examine results from three experiments in which the features of items to be remembered differed for visual objects in color or orientation, or for acoustic objects in noise duration or tone pitch. There were one or two of these sets on a trial and, when there were two sets, the similarity between their features varied: there were sets in different modalities, sets with different feature types within a modality, or sets of the same feature type. One-set trials consistently produced superior performance. For two-set trials, dissimilarity of the sets mattered only when both sets had to be attended, compared with attention to only one set. Feature differences within a modality mattered at least as much as between-modality differences. The findings conflict with what would be expected if modality were the sole organizing principle and support a working memory model in which a capacity-limited attention is constrained by the feature similarity of task-relevant items.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yu Li
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA.
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, McAlester Hall, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA.
| | - Nelson Cowan
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, McAlester Hall, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA.
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Li AY, Fukuda K, Barense MD. Independent features form integrated objects: Using a novel shape-color “conjunction task” to reconstruct memory resolution for multiple object features simultaneously. Cognition 2022; 223:105024. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/19/2021] [Revised: 12/17/2021] [Accepted: 01/13/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
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9
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Encode a Letter and Get Its Location for Free? Assessing Incidental Binding of Verbal and Spatial Features. Brain Sci 2022; 12:brainsci12060685. [PMID: 35741572 PMCID: PMC9221125 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci12060685] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/20/2022] [Revised: 04/28/2022] [Accepted: 05/05/2022] [Indexed: 02/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Previous studies have demonstrated that when presented with a display of spatially arranged letters, participants seem to remember the letters’ locations when letters are the focus of a recognition test, but do not remember letters’ identity when locations are tested. This strong binding asymmetry suggests that encoding location may be obligatory when remembering letters, which requires explanation within theories of working memory. We report two studies in which participants focused either on remembering letters or locations for a short interval. At test, positive probes were either intact letter–location combinations or recombinations of an observed letter and another previously occupied location. Incidental binding is observed when intact probes are recognized more accurately or faster than recombined probes. Here, however, we observed no evidence of incidental binding of location to letter in either experiment, neither under conditions where participants focused on one feature exclusively for a block, nor where the to-be-remembered feature was revealed prior to encoding with a changing pre-cue, nor where the to-be-remembered feature was retro-cued and therefore unknown during encoding. Our results call into question the robustness of a strong, consistent binding asymmetry. They suggest that while incidental location-to-letter binding may sometimes occur, it is not obligatory.
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Systematic Review of the Longitudinal Sensitivity of Precision Tasks in Visual Working Memory. Vision (Basel) 2022; 6:vision6010007. [PMID: 35225968 PMCID: PMC8883912 DOI: 10.3390/vision6010007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/22/2021] [Revised: 12/23/2021] [Accepted: 01/07/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Precision of working memory (WM) refers to the objective performance of individuals when trying to recall the features of the encoded WM items. Studies of precision in VWM aim to identify whether differences in WM performance within individuals are sensitive to individual states or traits. In this systematic review, we study VWM precision and whether it reflects true differences in ability to accurately store information, and thereby possibly a more sensitive measure than discrete VWM span alone. Sifting through 327 abstracts, we identified 34 relevant articles. After assessing these articles with regard to our inclusion criteria to test participants at two separate time points and have a sample size of at least fifteen participants, we found four longitudinal studies regarding VWM precision. One review author and two reviewers independently assessed all studies in the screening and selection process and extracted outcome measures, study characteristics, and, when possible, test–retest reliability metrics. Given the small and heterogeneous sample, this systematic review could not yet provide conclusive evidence on the sensitivity of VWM precision paradigms. Future research of VWM should include longitudinal studies of precision, and address both test–retest reliability in healthy adults and changes in precision during key developmental trajectory periods and in clinical populations.
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11
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McColeman CM, Yang F, Brady TF, Franconeri S. Rethinking the Ranks of Visual Channels. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VISUALIZATION AND COMPUTER GRAPHICS 2022; 28:707-717. [PMID: 34606455 DOI: 10.1109/tvcg.2021.3114684] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
Data can be visually represented using visual channels like position, length or luminance. An existing ranking of these visual channels is based on how accurately participants could report the ratio between two depicted values. There is an assumption that this ranking should hold for different tasks and for different numbers of marks. However, there is surprisingly little existing work that tests this assumption, especially given that visually computing ratios is relatively unimportant in real-world visualizations, compared to seeing, remembering, and comparing trends and motifs, across displays that almost universally depict more than two values. To simulate the information extracted from a glance at a visualization, we instead asked participants to immediately reproduce a set of values from memory after they were shown the visualization. These values could be shown in a bar graph (position (bar)), line graph (position (line)), heat map (luminance), bubble chart (area), misaligned bar graph (length), or 'wind map' (angle). With a Bayesian multilevel modeling approach, we show how the rank positions of visual channels shift across different numbers of marks (2, 4 or 8) and for bias, precision, and error measures. The ranking did not hold, even for reproductions of only 2 marks, and the new probabilistic ranking was highly inconsistent for reproductions of different numbers of marks. Other factors besides channel choice had an order of magnitude more influence on performance, such as the number of values in the series (e.g., more marks led to larger errors), or the value of each mark (e.g., small values were systematically overestimated). Every visual channel was worse for displays with 8 marks than 4, consistent with established limits on visual memory. These results point to the need for a body of empirical studies that move beyond two-value ratio judgments as a baseline for reliably ranking the quality of a visual channel, including testing new tasks (detection of trends or motifs), timescales (immediate computation, or later comparison), and the number of values (from a handful, to thousands).
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Abstract
Attentional mechanisms in perception can operate over locations, features, or objects. However, people direct attention not only towards information in the external world, but also to information maintained in working memory. To what extent do perception and memory draw on similar selection properties? Here we examined whether principles of object-based attention can also hold true in visual working memory. Experiment 1 examined whether object structure guides selection independently of spatial distance. In a memory updating task, participants encoded two rectangular bars with colored ends before updating two colors during maintenance. Memory updates were faster for two equidistant colors on the same object than on different objects. Experiment 2 examined whether selection of a single object feature spreads to other features within the same object. Participants memorized two sequentially presented Gabors, and a retro-cue indicated which object and feature dimension (color or orientation) would be most relevant to the memory test. We found stronger effects of object selection than feature selection: accuracy was higher for the uncued feature in the same object than the cued feature in the other object. Together these findings demonstrate effects of object-based attention on visual working memory, at least when object-based representations are encouraged, and suggest shared attentional mechanisms across perception and memory.
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13
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Benefits and pitfalls of data compression in visual working memory. Atten Percept Psychophys 2021; 83:2843-2864. [PMID: 34131860 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-021-02333-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 05/14/2021] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Data compression in memory is a cognitive process allowing participants to cope with complexity to reduce information load. However, previous studies have not yet considered the hypothesis that this process could also lead to over-simplifying information due to haphazard amplification of the compression process itself. For instance, we could expect that the over-regularized features of a visual scene could produce false recognition of patterns, not because of storage capacity limits but because of an errant compression process. To prompt memory compression in our participants, we used multielement visual displays for which the underlying information varied in compressibility. The compressibility of our material could vary depending on the number of common features between the multi-dimensional objects in the displays. We measured both accuracy and response times by probing memory representations with probes that we hypothesized could modify the participants' representations. We confirm that more compressible information facilitates performance, but a more novel finding is that compression can produce both typical memory errors and lengthened response times. Our findings provide clearer evidence of the forms of compression that participants carry out.
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A compressibility account of the color-sharing bonus in working memory. Atten Percept Psychophys 2021; 83:1613-1628. [PMID: 33686590 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-020-02231-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 12/07/2020] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
It has been established that objects sharing color in a visual display can boost working memory. The capacity to encode singletons particularly benefits from the repetition of colors encoded as perceptual groups. We manipulated the algorithmic complexity of visual displays to test whether compressibility of information could account for the color-sharing bonus. This study used a free recall working memory task in which the participants were shown displays of 2 to 8 color items. We examined the influence of set size, complexity, number of same-color clusters and amount of color redundancy. The results showed that the probability of correct recall of the pattern and the proportion of similarity between the pattern and the response decreased with an increase of each manipulated variable, except for color redundancy in terms of probability of correct recall. The model performance of complexity did not differ from that of clusters, but complexity was found more accurate than either set size or color redundancy. The results also showed that similar items were more often recalled adjacently, and complexity correlated strongly with the number of extra color repetitions in the response, suggesting that more complex patterns encouraged the use of information compression. Moreover, color repetitions were more often recalled first and the probability of correct recall for singletons and sub-patterns could be predicted by the compressibility measure. We discuss the potential advantage of using compressibility measures to capture the effects of regularities in visual patterns, in particular to refine analysis of the color-sharing bonus.
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15
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Sone H, Kang MS, Li AY, Tsubomi H, Fukuda K. Simultaneous estimation procedure reveals the object-based, but not space-based, dependence of visual working memory representations. Cognition 2021; 209:104579. [PMID: 33406461 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104579] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/08/2020] [Revised: 12/23/2020] [Accepted: 12/24/2020] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
Visual working memory (VWM) allows us to actively represent a limited amount of visual information in mind. Although its severe capacity limit is widely accepted, researchers disagree on the nature of its representational unit. Object-based theories argue that VWM organizes feature representations into integrated representations, whereas feature-based theories argue that VWM represents visual features independently. Supporting a feature-based account of VWM, recent studies have demonstrated that features comprising an object can be forgotten independently. Although evidence of feature-based forgetting invalidates a pure object-based account of VWM that assumes perfect integration of feature representations, it is possible that feature representations may be organized in a dependent manner on the basis of objects when they exist in memory. Furthermore, many previous studies prompted participants to recall object features independently by sequentially displaying a response probe for each feature (i.e., sequential estimation procedure), and this task demand might have promoted the independence of feature representations in VWM. To test these possibilities, we created a novel task to simultaneously capture the representational quality of two features of the same object (i.e., simultaneous estimation procedure) and tested their dependence across the entire spectrum of representational quality. Here, we found that the quality of feature representations within the same object covaried reliably in both sequential and simultaneous estimation procedures, but this representational dependence was statistically stronger in the simultaneous estimation procedure than in the sequential estimation procedure. Furthermore, we confirmed that neither the shared spatial location nor simultaneous estimation of two features was sufficient to induce representational dependence in VWM. Thus, our results demonstrate that feature representations in VWM are organized in a dependent manner on the basis of objects, but the degree of dependence can vary based on the current task demand.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hirotaka Sone
- University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada; University of Toyama, Japan
| | - Min-Suk Kang
- Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea; Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Republic of Korea.
| | | | | | - Keisuke Fukuda
- University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada; University of Toronto, Canada.
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16
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Quirk C, Adam KCS, Vogel EK. No Evidence for an Object Working Memory Capacity Benefit with Extended Viewing Time. eNeuro 2020; 7:ENEURO.0150-20.2020. [PMID: 32859722 PMCID: PMC7519167 DOI: 10.1523/eneuro.0150-20.2020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/15/2020] [Revised: 08/10/2020] [Accepted: 08/14/2020] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Visual working memory is the ability to hold visual information temporarily in mind. A key feature of working memory is its starkly limited capacity, such that only a few simple items can be remembered at once. Prior work has shown that this capacity limit cannot be circumvented by providing additional encoding time, whether providing just 200 ms or up to 1300 ms, capacity is still limited to only three to four items. In contrast, Brady et al. (2016) hypothesized that real-world objects, but not simple items used in prior research, benefit from additional encoding time and are not subject to traditional capacity limits. They supported this hypothesis with results from both behavior and the contralateral delay activity (CDA), an EEG marker of working memory storage, and concluded that familiar, complex stimuli are necessary to observe encoding time effects. Here, we conducted three replications of Brady et al.'s key manipulation with a larger number of human participants and more trials per condition. We failed to replicate their primary behavioral result (objects benefit more than colors from additional encoding time) and failed to observe an object-specific increase in the CDA. Instead, we found that encoding time benefitted both simple color items and real-world objects, in contrast to both the findings by Brady et al., and some prior work on this topic. Overall, we observed no support for the hypothesis that real-world objects have a different capacity than colored squares. We discuss the implications of our findings for theories of visual working memory (VWM).
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Affiliation(s)
- Colin Quirk
- Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637
- Institute for Mind and Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637
| | - Kirsten C S Adam
- Department of Psychology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093
- Institute for Neural Computation, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093
| | - Edward K Vogel
- Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637
- Institute for Mind and Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637
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17
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Morimoto T. The Nature of Haptic Working Memory Capacity and Its Relation to Visual Working Memory. Multisens Res 2020; 33:837-864. [PMID: 33706264 DOI: 10.1163/22134808-bja10007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/27/2019] [Accepted: 03/08/2020] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Abstract
I conducted three experiments to investigate haptic working memory capacity using a haptic change detection task with 2D stimuli. I adopted a single-task paradigm comprising haptic single-feature (orientation or texture) and haptic multifeature (orientation and texture) conditions in Experiment 1 and a dual-task paradigm with a primary haptic orientation or texture change detection task and a concurrent secondary visual shape or colour change detection task in Experiments 2-3. I observed that in the single-task paradigm, haptic change detection capacity was higher for single features than it was for multiple features. In haptic working memory, unlike in visual working memory, features of two different dimensions within an object cannot be integrated. In the dual-task paradigm, interference was observed when the concurrent visual shape change detection task was combined with the haptic orientation change detection task although interference was not observed when the concurrent visual colour change detection task was combined with it. In addition, the concurrent visual shape or colour change detection task did not interfere with the capacity for haptic texture memory, which was higher than that for haptic orientation memory. These findings demonstrate that geometric properties perhaps retained a common storage system shared between haptic working memory and visual working memory; however, haptic texture might be retained in an independent stable storage system that is haptic-specific.
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Affiliation(s)
- Taku Morimoto
- Department of Psychology, Hokkaido University, N10W7, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-0810, Japan
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18
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Maniglia MR, Souza AS. Age Differences in the Efficiency of Filtering and Ignoring Distraction in Visual Working Memory. Brain Sci 2020; 10:E556. [PMID: 32824098 PMCID: PMC7464792 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci10080556] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/27/2020] [Revised: 08/07/2020] [Accepted: 08/08/2020] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Healthy aging is associated with decline in the ability to maintain visual information in working memory (WM). We examined whether this decline can be explained by decreases in the ability to filter distraction during encoding or to ignore distraction during memory maintenance. Distraction consisted of irrelevant objects (Exp. 1) or irrelevant features of an object (Exp. 2). In Experiment 1, participants completed a spatial WM task requiring remembering locations on a grid. During encoding or during maintenance, irrelevant distractor positions were presented. In Experiment 2, participants encoded either single-feature (colors or orientations) or multifeature objects (colored triangles) and later reproduced one of these features using a continuous scale. In multifeature blocks, a precue appeared before encoding or a retrocue appeared during memory maintenance indicating with 100% certainty to the to-be-tested feature, thereby enabling filtering and ignoring of the irrelevant (not-cued) feature, respectively. There were no age-related deficits in the efficiency of filtering and ignoring distractor objects (Exp. 1) and of filtering irrelevant features (Exp. 2). Both younger and older adults could not ignore irrelevant features when cued with a retrocue. Overall, our results provide no evidence for an aging deficit in using attention to manage visual WM.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mariana R. Maniglia
- Department of Psychology, Ribeirão Preto School of Philosophy, Science and Literature (FFCLRP), University of São Paulo, Avenida Bandeirantes 3900, Ribeirão Preto/SP 14040-901, Brazil;
| | - Alessandra S. Souza
- Department of Psychology, Cognitive Psychology Unit, University of Zurich, Binzmühlestrasse 14/22, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland
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The transition from feature to object: Storage unit in visual working memory depends on task difficulty. Mem Cognit 2020; 47:1498-1514. [PMID: 31267436 DOI: 10.3758/s13421-019-00956-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Visual working memory (VWM) is a cognitive memory buffer for temporarily processing and storing visual information. Previous studies suggest that its capacity is severely limited, and there is an ongoing debate on whether the storage capacity is object-based or feature-based in VWM. In this study, a change-detection task was employed to investigate whether and how task difficulty can affect VWM, specifically, its capacity and the unit of storage. Task difficulty was manipulated through the set size of memory items, memory fidelity required by the resolution of representation and the type of feature tested. We examined two types of stimuli: the single-feature type, where each memory item was composed of a single feature (color or shape), and the conjunctive-feature type, where each item was composed of a conjunction of two features (colored shape). Experiment 1 replicated the previous findings that memory capacity for colors was larger than shapes, and decreased with the resolution demand regardless of the type of stimuli. In Experiment 2, we analyzed and compared the results from single-feature items and conjunctive-feature items in the low- and high-resolution conditions while controlling for the number of to-be-remembered features. By directly matching the estimated capacity based on an object-unit and a feature-unit with the theoretical prediction, the results showed that the unit storage in VWM tended to be feature-based with low task difficulty, and to be object-based with high task difficulty. This suggests that VWM is dynamic and flexible, dependent on the load of the current task.
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21
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22
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Manohar SG, Zokaei N, Fallon SJ, Vogels TP, Husain M. Neural mechanisms of attending to items in working memory. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2019; 101:1-12. [PMID: 30922977 PMCID: PMC6525322 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.03.017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 73] [Impact Index Per Article: 14.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/21/2019] [Revised: 03/18/2019] [Accepted: 03/23/2019] [Indexed: 02/03/2023]
Abstract
Working memory, the ability to keep recently accessed information available for immediate manipulation, has been proposed to rely on two mechanisms that appear difficult to reconcile: self-sustained neural firing, or the opposite-activity-silent synaptic traces. Here we review and contrast models of these two mechanisms, and then show that both phenomena can co-exist within a unified system in which neurons hold information in both activity and synapses. Rapid plasticity in flexibly-coding neurons allows features to be bound together into objects, with an important emergent property being the focus of attention. One memory item is held by persistent activity in an attended or "focused" state, and is thus remembered better than other items. Other, previously attended items can remain in memory but in the background, encoded in activity-silent synaptic traces. This dual functional architecture provides a unified common mechanism accounting for a diversity of perplexing attention and memory effects that have been hitherto difficult to explain in a single theoretical framework.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sanjay G Manohar
- Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, OX3 9DU, United Kingdom.
| | - Nahid Zokaei
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom; Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
| | - Sean J Fallon
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
| | - Tim P Vogels
- Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
| | - Masud Husain
- Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, OX3 9DU, United Kingdom; Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
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23
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Schurgin MW, Brady TF. When “capacity” changes with set size: Ensemble representations support the detection of across-category changes in visual working memory. J Vis 2019; 19:3. [DOI: 10.1167/19.5.3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Mark W. Schurgin
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA
| | - Timothy F. Brady
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA
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24
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Pina JE, Bodner M, Ermentrout B. Oscillations in working memory and neural binding: A mechanism for multiple memories and their interactions. PLoS Comput Biol 2018; 14:e1006517. [PMID: 30419015 PMCID: PMC6258380 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006517] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/08/2018] [Revised: 11/26/2018] [Accepted: 09/17/2018] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Neural oscillations have been recorded and implicated in many different basic brain and cognitive processes. For example, oscillatory neural activity has been suggested to play a role in binding and in the maintenance of information in working memory. With respect to the latter, the majority of work has focused primarily on oscillations in terms of providing a "code" in working memory. However, oscillations may additionally play a fundamental role by enabling or facilitating essential properties and behaviors that neuronal networks must exhibit in order to produce functional working memory and the processes it supports, such as combining items in memory into bound objects or separating bound objects into distinct items. In the present work, we present a biologically plausible working memory model and demonstrate that specific types of stable oscillatory dynamics that arise may play critical roles in providing mechanisms for working memory and the cognitive functions that it supports. Specifically, these roles include (1) enabling a range of different types of binding, (2) both enabling and limiting capacities of bound and distinct items held active in working memory, and (3) facilitating transitions between active working memory states as required in cognitive function. Several key results arise within the examinations, such as the occurrence of different network capacities for working memory and binding, differences in processing times for transitions in working memory states, and the emergence of a combinatorially rich and complex range of oscillatory states that are sufficient to map onto a wide range of cognitive operations supported by working memory, such as variable binding, reasoning, and language. In particular, we show that these oscillatory states and their transitions can provide a specific instantiation of current established connectionist models in representing these functions. Finally, we further characterize the dependence of the relevant oscillatory solutions on certain critical parameters, including mutual inhibition and synaptic timescales.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jason E. Pina
- Department of Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America
| | - Mark Bodner
- MIND Research Institute, Irvine, California, United States of America
| | - Bard Ermentrout
- Department of Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America
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25
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Li J, Qian J, Liang F. Evidence for the beneficial effect of perceptual grouping on visual working memory: an empirical study on illusory contour and a meta-analytic study. Sci Rep 2018; 8:13864. [PMID: 30218056 PMCID: PMC6138684 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-32039-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/30/2018] [Accepted: 08/31/2018] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
The capacity of visual working memory (VWM) is found to be extremely limited. Past research shows that VWM can be facilitated by Gestalt principles of grouping, however, it remains controversial whether factors like the type of Gestalt principles, the characteristics of stimuli and the nature of experimental design could affect the beneficial effect of grouping. In particular, studies have shown that perceptual grouping could improve memory performance for a feature that is relevant for grouping, but it is unclear whether the same improvement exists for a feature that is irrelevant for grouping. In this article, an empirical study and a meta-analytic study were conducted to investigate the effect of perceptual grouping on VWM. In the empirical study, we examined the grouping effect by employing a Kanizsa illusion in which memory items were grouped by illusory contour. We found that the memory performance was improved for the grouped items even though the tested feature was grouping irrelevant, and the improvement was not significantly different from the effect of grouping by physical connectedness or by solid occlusion. In the meta-analytic study, we systematically and quantitatively examined the effect of perceptual grouping on VWM by pulling the results from all eligible studies, and found that the beneficial grouping effect was robust but the magnitude of the effect can be affected by several moderators. Factors like the types of grouping methods, the duration and the layout of the memory display, and the characteristics of the tested feature moderated the grouping effect, whereas whether employing a cue or a verbal suppression task did not. Our study suggests that the underlying mechanism of the grouping benefit may be distinct with regard to grouping relevancy of the to-be-stored feature. The grouping effect on VWM may be independent of attention for a grouping relevant feature, but may rely on attentional prioritization for a grouping irrelevant feature.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jiaofeng Li
- Sun Yat-Sen University, Department of Psychology, Guangzhou, 510000, China
| | - Jiehui Qian
- Sun Yat-Sen University, Department of Psychology, Guangzhou, 510000, China.
| | - Fan Liang
- Sun Yat-Sen University, Department of Psychology, Guangzhou, 510000, China
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26
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Contralateral delay activity does not reflect behavioral feature load in visual working memory. Biol Psychol 2018; 137:107-115. [PMID: 30055237 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2018.07.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/22/2016] [Revised: 07/11/2018] [Accepted: 07/12/2018] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
An ongoing debate in visual working memory research is concentrated on whether visual working memory capacity is determined solely by the number of objects to be memorized, or additionally by the number of relevant features contained within objects. Using a novel change detection task that contained multi-feature objects we examined the effect of both object number and feature number on visual working memory capacity, change detection sensitivity, and posterior slow wave event-related brain potential (ERP) activity. Behaviorally, working memory capacity and sensitivity were modulated as a function of both the number of objects and the number of features memorized per object. However, the Contralateral Delay Activity (CDA) was only sensitive to the number of objects, but not to the number of features. This suggests that while both objects and features contribute to limitations in visual working memory capacity, the CDA is an insufficient mechanism to account for feature level representations.
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27
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Abstract
Complex working memory span tasks were designed to engage multiple aspects of working memory and impose interleaved processing demands that limit the use of mnemonic strategies, such as chunking. Consequently, the average span is usually lower (4 ± 1 items) than in simple span tasks (7 ± 2 items). One possible reason for the higher span of simple span tasks is that participants can take advantage of the spare time to chunk multiple items together to form fewer independent units, approximating 4 ± 1 chunks. It follows that the respective spans of these two types of tasks could be equal (at around 4 ± 1) if stimulus lists exclusively used nonchunkable stimulus items. To manipulate the chunkability of the stimulus lists, our method involved a measure of their compressibility, i.e., the extent to which a pattern exists that can be detected and used as a basis of chunk formation. We predicted an interaction between the types of tasks and chunkability/compressibility, supporting a single higher span for the condition in which a simple span task was combined with chunkable items. The three other conditions were predicted to prevent chunking processes, either because the interleaved processing task did not allow any chunking process to occur or because the noncompressible material inherently limited the chunkability of information. The prediction that chunking is important solely in simple spans was not confirmed: Effects of information compression contributed to performance levels to a similar extent in both tasks according to a theoretically-based metric. This result suggests that i) complex span tasks might overestimate storage capacity in general, and ii) the difference between simple and complex span performance levels must rest in some mechanism other than prevention of a chunking strategy by the interleaved processing task in complex span tasks.
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28
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Morey CC, Hadley LV, Buttelmann F, Könen T, Meaney JA, Auyeung B, Karbach J, Chevalier N. The effects of verbal and spatial memory load on children's processing speed. Ann N Y Acad Sci 2018; 1424:161-174. [PMID: 29707802 PMCID: PMC6849596 DOI: 10.1111/nyas.13653] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/29/2017] [Revised: 01/29/2018] [Accepted: 02/05/2018] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Examining the impact of maintenance on processing speed allows us to test whether storage and processing resources are shared. Comparing these relationships in children of different ages allows further insight into whether one or multiple resources for these operations must be assumed and whether remembering is proactive throughout childhood. We tested 185 4‐ to 6‐ and 8‐ to 10‐year‐old children using adaptive complex span tasks, in which simple judgments were interleaved between to‐be‐remembered items. The adaptiveness of our tasks ensured that all participants frequently correctly recalled the items. If storage and processing require a single resource, and if participants serially reactivate the memoranda between processing episodes, processing response times should increase with serial position of the processing judgment within lists. We observed different within‐list dynamics for each age group. Older children's processing judgments slowed gradually when more than two memory items were maintained. By contrast, younger children showed no evidence of slower processing with increasing memory load. Our results support models of working memory that assume that some common resource is responsible for verbal and spatial storage and processing. They also support the notion that remembering becomes more proactive as children mature.
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Affiliation(s)
- Candice C Morey
- School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
| | - Lauren V Hadley
- Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
| | - Frances Buttelmann
- Department of Psychology, University of Jena, Jena, Germany.,Center for Research on Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA), Frankfurt, Germany
| | - Tanja Könen
- Center for Research on Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA), Frankfurt, Germany.,Department of Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Landau, Germany
| | - Julie-Anne Meaney
- Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
| | - Bonnie Auyeung
- Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
| | - Julia Karbach
- Center for Research on Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA), Frankfurt, Germany.,Department of Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Landau, Germany
| | - Nicolas Chevalier
- Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
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29
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Visual memory, the long and the short of it: A review of visual working memory and long-term memory. Atten Percept Psychophys 2018; 80:1035-1056. [DOI: 10.3758/s13414-018-1522-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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30
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Hitch GJ, Hu Y, Allen RJ, Baddeley AD. Competition for the focus of attention in visual working memory: perceptual recency versus executive control. Ann N Y Acad Sci 2018. [PMID: 29524359 DOI: 10.1111/nyas.13631] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Previous research on memory for a short sequence of visual stimuli indicates that access to the focus of attention (FoA) can be achieved in either of two ways. The first is automatic and is indexed by the recency effect, the enhanced retention of the final item. The second is strategic and based on instructions to prioritize items differentially, a process that draws on executive capacity and boosts retention of information deemed important. In both cases, the increased level of retention can be selectively reduced by presenting a poststimulus distractor (or suffix). We manipulated these variables across three experiments. Experiment 1 generalized previous evidence that prioritizing a single item enhances its retention and increases its vulnerability to interference from a poststimulus suffix. A second experiment showed that the enhancement from prioritizing one or two items comes at a cost to the recency effect. A third experiment showed that prioritizing two items renders memory for both vulnerable to interference from an irrelevant suffix. The results suggest that some but not all items in working memory compete to occupy a narrow FoA and that this competition is determined by a combination of perceptually driven recency and internal executive control.
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Affiliation(s)
- Graham J Hitch
- Department of Psychology, University of York, York, United Kingdom
| | - Yanmei Hu
- School of Psychology, Northeast Normal University, Changchu, China
| | - Richard J Allen
- School of Psychology, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
| | - Alan D Baddeley
- Department of Psychology, University of York, York, United Kingdom
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31
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Atkinson AL, Baddeley AD, Allen RJ. Remember some or remember all? Ageing and strategy effects in visual working memory. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2018; 71:1561-1573. [DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2017.1341537] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Abstract
Recent research has indicated that visual working memory capacity for unidimensional items might be boosted by focusing on all presented items, as opposed to a subset of them. However, it is not clear whether the same outcomes would be observed if more complex items were used which require feature binding, a potentially more demanding task. The current experiments, therefore, examined the effects of encoding strategy using multidimensional items in tasks that required feature binding. Effects were explored across a range of different age groups (Experiment 1) and task conditions (Experiment 2). In both experiments, participants performed significantly better when focusing on a subset of items, regardless of age or methodological variations, suggesting this is the optimal strategy to use when several multidimensional items are presented and binding is required. Implications for task interpretation and visual working memory function are discussed.
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32
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Foerster RM, Schneider WX. Involuntary top-down control by search-irrelevant features: Visual working memory biases attention in an object-based manner. Cognition 2017; 172:37-45. [PMID: 29223864 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.12.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/30/2017] [Revised: 11/08/2017] [Accepted: 12/02/2017] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
Many everyday tasks involve successive visual-search episodes with changing targets. Converging evidence suggests that these targets are retained in visual working memory (VWM) and bias attention from there. It is unknown whether all or only search-relevant features of a VWM template bias attention during search. Bias signals might be configured exclusively to task-relevant features so that only search-relevant features bias attention. Alternatively, VWM might maintain objects in the form of bound features. Then, all template features will bias attention in an object-based manner, so that biasing effects are ranked by feature relevance. Here, we investigated whether search-irrelevant VWM template features bias attention. Participants had to saccade to a target opposite a distractor. A colored cue depicted the target prior to each search trial. The target was predefined only by its identity, while its color was irrelevant. When target and cue matched not only in identity (search-relevant) but also in color (search-irrelevant), saccades went more often and faster directly to the target than without any color match (Experiment 1). When introducing a cue-distractor color match (Experiment 2), direct target saccades were most likely when target and cue matched in the search-irrelevant color and least likely in case of a cue-distractor color match. When cue and target were never colored the same (Experiment 3), cue-colored distractors still captured the eyes more often than different-colored distractors despite color being search-irrelevant. As participants were informed about the misleading color, the result argues against a strategical and voluntary usage of color. Instead, search-irrelevant features biased attention obligatorily arguing for involuntary top-down control by object-based VWM templates.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rebecca M Foerster
- Neuro-Cognitive Psychology, Bielefeld University, Germany; 'Cognitive Interaction Technology' Cluster of Excellence CITEC, Bielefeld University, Germany.
| | - Werner X Schneider
- Neuro-Cognitive Psychology, Bielefeld University, Germany; 'Cognitive Interaction Technology' Cluster of Excellence CITEC, Bielefeld University, Germany
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33
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Abstract
A central question in the study of visual short-term memory (VSTM) has been whether its basic units are objects or features. Most studies addressing this question have used change detection tasks in which the feature value before the change is highly discriminable from the feature value after the change. This approach assumes that memory noise is negligible, which recent work has shown not to be the case. Here, we investigate VSTM for orientation and color within a noisy-memory framework, using change localization with a variable magnitude of change. A specific consequence of the noise is that it is necessary to model the inference (decision) stage. We find that (a) orientation and color have independent pools of memory resource (consistent with classic results); (b) an irrelevant feature dimension is either encoded but ignored during decision-making, or encoded with low precision and taken into account during decision-making; and (c) total resource available in a given feature dimension is lower in the presence of task-relevant stimuli that are neutral in that feature dimension. We propose a framework in which feature resource comes both in packaged and in targeted form.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hongsup Shin
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.,Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA
| | - Wei Ji Ma
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.,Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA
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34
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Abstract
Emerging evidence suggests that age-related declines in memory may reflect a failure in pattern separation, a process that is believed to reduce the encoding overlap between similar stimulus representations during memory encoding. Indeed, behavioural pattern separation may be indexed by a visual continuous recognition task in which items are presented in sequence and observers report for each whether it is novel, previously viewed (old), or whether it shares features with a previously viewed item (similar). In comparison to young adults, older adults show a decreased pattern separation when the number of items between "old" and "similar" items is increased. Yet the mechanisms of forgetting underpinning this type of recognition task are yet to be explored in a cognitively homogenous group, with careful control over the parameters of the task, including elapsing time (a critical variable in models of forgetting). By extending the inter-item intervals, number of intervening items and overall decay interval, we observed in a young adult sample (N = 35, Mage = 19.56 years) that the critical factor governing performance was inter-item interval. We argue that tasks using behavioural continuous recognition to index pattern separation in immediate memory will benefit from generous inter-item spacing, offering protection from inter-item interference.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amy V Smith
- a School of Psychology , University of Leeds , Leeds , UK
| | - Denis McKeown
- a School of Psychology , University of Leeds , Leeds , UK
| | - David Bunce
- a School of Psychology , University of Leeds , Leeds , UK
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35
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Abstract
Four experiments investigated whether conforming to Gestalt principles, well known to drive visual perception, also facilitates the active maintenance of information in visual working memory (VWM). We used the change detection task, which required the memorization of visual patterns composed of several shapes. We observed no effects of symmetry of visual patterns on VWM performance. However, there was a moderate positive effect when a particular shape that was probed matched the shape of the whole pattern (the whole-part similarity effect). Data support the models assuming that VWM encodes not only particular objects of the perceptual scene but also the spatial relations between them (the ensemble representation). The ensemble representation may prime objects similar to its shape and thereby boost access to them. In contrast, the null effect of symmetry relates the fact that this very feature of an ensemble does not yield any useful additional information for VWM.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patrycja Kałamała
- 1 Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.,2 Institute of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland
| | | | | | - Adam Chuderski
- 2 Institute of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland
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36
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Cowan N. Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get at the Essence of Cognitive Growth? PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2017; 11:239-64. [PMID: 26993277 DOI: 10.1177/1745691615621279] [Citation(s) in RCA: 108] [Impact Index Per Article: 15.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
The theoretical and practical understanding of cognitive development depends on working memory, the limited information temporarily accessible for such daily activities as language processing and problem solving. In this article, I assess many possible reasons that working memory performance improves with development. A first glance at the literature leads to the weird impression that working memory capacity reaches adult levels during infancy but then regresses during childhood. In place of that unlikely explanation, I consider how infant studies may lead to overestimates of capacity if one neglects supports that the tasks provide, compared with adult-level tasks. Further development of working memory during the school years is also considered. Many investigators have come to suspect that working memory capacity may be constant after infancy because of various factors such as developmental increases in knowledge, filtering out of irrelevant distractions, encoding and rehearsal strategies, and pattern formation. With each of these factors controlled, though, working memory still improves during the school years. Suggestions are made for research to bridge the gap between infant and child developmental research, to understand the focus and control of attention in working memory and how these skills develop, and to pinpoint the nature of capacity and its development from infancy forward.
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37
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Mental Objects in Working Memory: Development of Basic Capacity or of Cognitive Completion? ADVANCES IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND BEHAVIOR 2017; 52:81-104. [PMID: 28215289 DOI: 10.1016/bs.acdb.2016.12.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
Working memory is the small amount of information that we hold in mind and use to carry out cognitive processes such as language comprehension and production, problem solving, and decision making. In order to understand cognitive development, it would be helpful to know whether working memory increases in capacity with development and, if so, how and why. I will focus on two major stumbling blocks toward understanding working memory development, namely that (1) many potentially relevant aspects of the mind change in parallel during development, obscuring the role of any one change; and (2) one cannot use the same test procedure from infancy to adulthood, complicating comparisons across age groups. With regard to the first stumbling block, the parallel development of different aspects of the mind, we discuss research in which attempts were made to hold constant some factors (knowledge, strategies, direction of attention) to investigate whether developmental differences remain. With regard to the second stumbling block, procedural differences in tests for different age groups, I suggest ways in which the results might be reconciled across procedures. I highlight the value of pursuing research that could distinguish between two different key hypotheses that emerge: that there is a developmental increase in the number of working memory slots (or in a basic resource that holds items in working memory), and that there is a developmental increase in the amount of detail that each of these slots can hold.
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38
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Hardman KO, Cowan N. Reasoning and memory: People make varied use of the information available in working memory. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 2016; 42:700-22. [PMID: 26569436 PMCID: PMC4850104 DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000197] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Working memory (WM) is used for storing information in a highly accessible state so that other mental processes, such as reasoning, can use that information. Some WM tasks require that participants not only store information, but also reason about that information to perform optimally on the task. In this study, we used visual WM tasks that had both storage and reasoning components to determine both how ideally people are able to reason about information in WM and if there is a relationship between information storage and reasoning. We developed novel psychological process models of the tasks that allowed us to estimate for each participant both how much information they had in WM and how efficiently they reasoned about that information. Our estimates of information use showed that participants are not all ideal information users or minimal information users, but rather that there are individual differences in the thoroughness of information use in our WM tasks. However, we found that our participants tended to be more ideal than minimal. One implication of this work is that to accurately estimate the amount of information in WM, it is important to also estimate how efficiently that information is used. This new analysis contributes to the theoretical premise that human rationality may be bounded by the complexity of task demands. (PsycINFO Database Record
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Affiliation(s)
- Kyle O Hardman
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri
| | - Nelson Cowan
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri
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Joseph S, Teki S, Kumar S, Husain M, Griffiths TD. Resource allocation models of auditory working memory. Brain Res 2016; 1640:183-92. [PMID: 26835560 DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2016.01.044] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/26/2015] [Revised: 01/19/2016] [Accepted: 01/25/2016] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
Auditory working memory (WM) is the cognitive faculty that allows us to actively hold and manipulate sounds in mind over short periods of time. We develop here a particular perspective on WM for non-verbal, auditory objects as well as for time based on the consideration of possible parallels to visual WM. In vision, there has been a vigorous debate on whether WM capacity is limited to a fixed number of items or whether it represents a limited resource that can be allocated flexibly across items. Resource allocation models predict that the precision with which an item is represented decreases as a function of total number of items maintained in WM because a limited resource is shared among stored objects. We consider here auditory work on sequentially presented objects of different pitch as well as time intervals from the perspective of dynamic resource allocation. We consider whether the working memory resource might be determined by perceptual features such as pitch or timbre, or bound objects comprising multiple features, and we speculate on brain substrates for these behavioural models. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled SI: Auditory working memory.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sabine Joseph
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, UK; Institute of Neurology, University College London, UK.
| | - Sundeep Teki
- Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QX, UK
| | - Sukhbinder Kumar
- Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London, UK; Institute of Neuroscience, Medical School, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK
| | - Masud Husain
- Department of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Oxford, UK; Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK
| | - Timothy D Griffiths
- Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London, UK; Institute of Neuroscience, Medical School, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK.
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Nikolova A, Macken B. The objects of visuospatial short-term memory: Perceptual organization and change detection. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2015; 69:1426-37. [PMID: 26286369 PMCID: PMC4867792 DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2015.1083595] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Abstract
We used a colour change-detection paradigm where participants were required to remember colours of six equally spaced circles. Items were superimposed on a background so as to perceptually group them within (a) an intact ring-shaped object, (b) a physically segmented but perceptually completed ring-shaped object, or (c) a corresponding background segmented into three arc-shaped objects. A nonpredictive cue at the location of one of the circles was followed by the memory items, which in turn were followed by a test display containing a probe indicating the circle to be judged same/different. Reaction times for correct responses revealed a same-object advantage; correct responses were faster to probes on the same object as the cue than to equidistant probes on a segmented object. This same-object advantage was identical for physically and perceptually completed objects, but was only evident in reaction times, and not in accuracy measures. Not only, therefore, is it important to consider object-level perceptual organization of stimulus elements when assessing the influence of a range of factors (e.g., number and complexity of elements) in visuospatial short-term memory, but a more detailed picture of the structure of information in memory may be revealed by measuring speed as well as accuracy.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Bill Macken
- a School of Psychology , Cardiff University , Cardiff , UK
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Quak M, London RE, Talsma D. A multisensory perspective of working memory. Front Hum Neurosci 2015; 9:197. [PMID: 25954176 PMCID: PMC4404829 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00197] [Citation(s) in RCA: 60] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/03/2014] [Accepted: 03/25/2015] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
Although our sensory experience is mostly multisensory in nature, research on working memory representations has focused mainly on examining the senses in isolation. Results from the multisensory processing literature make it clear that the senses interact on a more intimate manner than previously assumed. These interactions raise questions regarding the manner in which multisensory information is maintained in working memory. We discuss the current status of research on multisensory processing and the implications of these findings on our theoretical understanding of working memory. To do so, we focus on reviewing working memory research conducted from a multisensory perspective, and discuss the relation between working memory, attention, and multisensory processing in the context of the predictive coding framework. We argue that a multisensory approach to the study of working memory is indispensable to achieve a realistic understanding of how working memory processes maintain and manipulate information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michel Quak
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University Ghent, Belgium
| | | | - Durk Talsma
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University Ghent, Belgium
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Cowan N, Saults JS, Clark KM. Exploring age differences in visual working memory capacity: is there a contribution of memory for configuration? J Exp Child Psychol 2015; 135:72-85. [PMID: 25841172 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2015.03.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/26/2014] [Revised: 02/28/2015] [Accepted: 03/01/2015] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Recent research has shown marked developmental increases in the apparent capacity of working memory. This recent research is based largely on performance on tasks in which a visual array is to be retained briefly for comparison with a subsequent probe display. Here we examined a possible theoretical alternative (or supplement) to a developmental increase in working memory in which children could improve in the ability to combine items in an array to form a coherent configuration. Elementary school children and adults received, on each trial, an array of colored spots to be remembered. On some trials, we provided structure in the probe display to facilitate the formation of a mental representation in which a coherent configuration is encoded. This stimulus structure in the probe display helped younger children, and thus reduced the developmental trend, but only on trials in which the participants were held responsible for the locations of items in the array. We conclude that, in addition to the development of the ability to form precise spatial configurations from items, the evidence is consistent with the existence of an actual developmental increase in working memory capacity for objects in an array.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nelson Cowan
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
| | - J Scott Saults
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
| | - Katherine M Clark
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
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Macken B, Taylor J, Jones D. Limitless capacity: a dynamic object-oriented approach to short-term memory. Front Psychol 2015; 6:293. [PMID: 25852610 PMCID: PMC4369667 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00293] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2014] [Accepted: 03/01/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The notion of capacity-limited processing systems is a core element of cognitive accounts of limited and variable performance, enshrined within the short-term memory construct. We begin with a detailed critical analysis of the conceptual bases of this view and argue that there are fundamental problems - ones that go to the heart of cognitivism more generally - that render it untenable. In place of limited capacity systems, we propose a framework for explaining performance that focuses on the dynamic interplay of three aspects of any given setting: the particular task that must be accomplished, the nature and form of the material upon which the task must be performed, and the repertoire of skills and perceptual-motor functions possessed by the participant. We provide empirical examples of the applications of this framework in areas of performance typically accounted for by reference to capacity-limited short-term memory processes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bill Macken
- School of Psychology, Cardiff University Cardiff, UK
| | - John Taylor
- School of Psychology, Cardiff University Cardiff, UK
| | - Dylan Jones
- School of Psychology, Cardiff University Cardiff, UK
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Vergauwe E, Cowan N. Working memory units are all in your head: Factors that influence whether features or objects are the favored units. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 2015; 41:1404-16. [PMID: 25705873 DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000108] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
We compared two contrasting hypotheses of how multifeatured objects are stored in visual working memory (vWM); as integrated objects or as independent features. A new procedure was devised to examine vWM representations of several concurrently held objects and their features and our main measure was reaction time (RT), allowing an examination of the real-time search through features and/or objects in an array in vWM. Response speeds to probes with color, shape, or both were studied as a function of the number of memorized colored shapes. Four testing groups were created by varying the instructions and the way in which probes with both color and shape were presented. The instructions explicitly either encouraged or discouraged the use of binding information and the task-relevance of binding information was further suggested by presenting probes with both color and shapes as either integrated objects or independent features. Our results show that the unit used for retrieval from vWM depends on the testing situation. Search was fully object-based only when all factors support that basis of search, in which case retrieving 2 features took no longer than retrieving a single feature. Otherwise, retrieving 2 features took longer than retrieving a single feature. Additional analyses of change detection latency suggested that, even though different testing situations can result in a stronger emphasis on either the feature dimension or the object dimension, neither one disappears from the representation and both concurrently affect change detection performance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Evie Vergauwe
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri
| | - Nelson Cowan
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri
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