Current directions in visual working memory research: An introduction and emerging insights

Liesefeld, Heinrich René; Müller, Hermann J.

doi:10.1111/bjop.12377

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 116 publications

(145 reference statements)

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“…Participants are required to compare the to-be-memorized items in the memory array with the item/items presented in the test display. These CDT components roughly correspond to the main VWM operations of encoding, maintenance, and retrieval (Luck, 2008; Liesefeld and Müller, 2019). Although other VWM-related paradigms have also been more or less successfully employed, (e.g., the n-back task; Jaeggi et al, 2010), the CDT is the most widely used and is considered the most versatile paradigm for the study of VWM (Luck and Vogel, 2013).…”

Section: Methodological Aspectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Visual Working Memory for Faces and Facial Expressions as a Useful “Tool” for Understanding Social and Affective Cognition

Gambarota

Sessa

2019

Front. Psychol.

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Visual working memory (VWM) is one of the most investigated cognitive systems functioning as a hub between low- and high-level processes. Remarkably, its role in human cognitive architecture makes it a stage of crucial importance for the study of socio-affective cognition, also in relation with psychopathology such as anxiety. Among socio-affective stimuli, faces occupy a place of first importance. How faces and facial expressions are encoded and maintained in VWM is the focus of this review. Within the main theoretical VWM models, we will review research comparing VWM representations of faces and of other classes of stimuli. We will further present previous work investigating if and how both static (i.e., ethnicity, trustworthiness and identity) and changeable (i.e., facial expressions) facial features are represented in VWM. Finally, we will examine research showing qualitative differences in VWM for face representations as a function of psychopathology and personality traits. The findings that we will review are not always coherent with each other, and for this reason we will highlight the main methodological differences as the main source of inconsistency. Finally, we will provide some suggestions for future research in this field in order to foster our understanding of representation of faces in VWM and its potential role in supporting socio-affective cognition.

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Section: Methodological Aspectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…VWM is a core cognitive system defined by a limited-space in terms of capacity in which visual information is temporarily stored and manipulated for further processing (Luck, 2008; Liesefeld and Müller, 2019) and in this vein it can be considered as a “form of mental workspace” (Fukuda et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual Working Memory for Faces and Facial Expressions as a Useful “Tool” for Understanding Social and Affective Cognition

Gambarota

Sessa

2019

Front. Psychol.

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“…Visual working memory (VWM) is a crucial hub in the processing of visual information, and its limitations are strongly related to general cognitive ability (Fukuda et al, 2010). Variation in VWM performance is typically interpreted in terms of some limited commodity (slots or resources; Cowan, 2001; Liesefeld & Müller, 2019a; Luck & Vogel, 2013; Ma et al, 2014), but alternative interpretations exist (Emrich et al, 2017; Oberauer & Lin, 2017). Identifying influences on VWM performance is of high applied and theoretical relevance because of its central role in theories of visual cognition.…”

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confidence: 99%

Massive Effects of Saliency on Information Processing in Visual Working Memory

Constant

Liesefeld

2021

Psychol Sci

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Limitations in the ability to temporarily represent information in visual working memory (VWM) are crucial for visual cognition. Whether VWM processing is dependent on an object’s saliency (i.e., how much it stands out) has been neglected in VWM research. Therefore, we developed a novel VWM task that allows direct control over saliency. In three experiments with this task (on 10, 31, and 60 adults, respectively), we consistently found that VWM performance is strongly and parametrically influenced by saliency and that both an object’s relative saliency (compared with concurrently presented objects) and absolute saliency influence VWM processing. We also demonstrated that this effect is indeed due to bottom-up saliency rather than differential fit between each object and the top-down attentional template. A simple computational model assuming that VWM performance is determined by the weighted sum of absolute and relative saliency accounts well for the observed data patterns.

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“…Visual working memory (VWM) is a crucial hub in the processing of visual information and its limitations are strongly related to general cognitive ability (Fukuda et al, 2010). Variation in VWM performance is typically interpreted in terms of some limited commodity (slots or resources, Cowan, 2001;Liesefeld & Müller, 2019a;Luck & Vogel, 2013;Ma et al, 2014), but alternative interpretations exist (Emrich et al, 2017;Oberauer & Lin, 2017). Due to its central role in (theories of) visual cognition, identifying influences on VWM performance is of high applied and theoretical relevance.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Massive Effects of Saliency on Information Processing in Visual Working Memory

Constant¹,

Liesefeld²

2019

Preprint

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Given its severe capacity limitations, visual working memory (VWM) can process only a tiny fraction of the complex visual world. While selection of relevant information from cluttered scenes is a main topic of research on visual attention, it has not received much research efforts in the VWM community. Based on knowledge from visual-attention research, we develop a task that mimics the complexity of real-world scenes while maintaining tight experimental control over stimulation and allowing for the application of state-of-the-art computational models and neuroscientific techniques. In two experiments, we provide solid evidence that the distribution of a limited VWM resource is parametrically influenced by saliency (i.e., how much an object stands out from its immediate surround). Our third experiment demonstrates that – in contrast to the real world – saliency is virtually maxed out for relevant objects in typical laboratory studies of VWM, likely yielding a pronounced underestimation of this major influence on VWM. We discuss various, not necessarily exclusive, mechanisms by which saliency might influence VWM performance, including saliency-dependent distribution of resources, encoding efficiency and faster/better filtering of unnecessary information and relate our results to the Theory of Visual Attention (TVA).

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Current directions in visual working memory research: An introduction and emerging insights

Cited by 15 publications

References 116 publications

Visual Working Memory for Faces and Facial Expressions as a Useful “Tool” for Understanding Social and Affective Cognition

Visual Working Memory for Faces and Facial Expressions as a Useful “Tool” for Understanding Social and Affective Cognition

Massive Effects of Saliency on Information Processing in Visual Working Memory

Massive Effects of Saliency on Information Processing in Visual Working Memory

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