Familiarity and visual change detection

Pashler, Harold

doi:10.3758/bf03210419

Cited by 933 publications

(947 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…We have, metaphorically, provided a barrier intended to break up that snowball and allow a more carefully-considered reshaping of some of the snow. Pashler (1988) developed a formula to estimate the number of items in WM based on the hit and false alarm rates. Pashler's formula assumed that, upon examining a briefly presented array of N items, the subject is able to apprehend a certain fixed number of items, k. The apprehension of these items would allow a change to be detected if one of these k items should happen to be the changed item.…”

Section: Unresolved Theoretical Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the capacity of attention: Its estimation and its role in working memory and cognitive aptitudes

Cowan

Elliott

Saults

et al. 2005

Cognitive Psychology

977

1,051

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Working memory (WM) is the set of mental processes holding limited information in a temporarily accessible state in service of cognition. We provide a theoretical framework to understand the relation between WM and aptitude measures. The WM measures that have yielded high correlations with aptitudes include separate storage and processing task components, on the assumption that WM involves both storage and processing. We argue that the critical aspect of successful WM measures is that rehearsal and grouping processes are prevented, allowing a clearer estimate of how many separate chunks of information the focus of attention circumscribes at once. Storage-and-processing tasks correlate with aptitudes, according to this view, largely because the processing task prevents rehearsal and grouping of items to be recalled. In a developmental study, we document that several scope-of-attention measures that do not include a separate processing component, but nevertheless prevent efficient rehearsal or grouping, also correlate well with aptitudes and with storage-andprocessing measures. So does digit span in children too young to rehearse. Keywordsworking memory; short-term memory; individual differences; variation in working memory; cholastic abilities; intellectual abilities; attention; capacity; storage capacity Baddeley and Hitch (1974) highlighted a key theoretical construct, working memory (WM), which can be described generally as the set of mechanisms capable of retaining a small amount of information in an active state for use in ongoing cognitive tasks (though it now means Research on WM suggests that the measures used most often to examine individual differences have both strengths and weaknesses. A main type of strength is their strong correlation with intellectual aptitude tests, and a main type of weakness is the difficulty encountered in analyzing and interpreting WM test results. This difficulty stems largely from the reliance on dual tasks in the measurement of WM capacity (which include separate storage and processing task components). We will argue that the research literature provides hints that the strengths can be retained without using storage-and-processing measures. We will offer a theoretical framework for doing so, and for measuring WM in a more meaningful way than is found with current measurement practices. The theoretical framework is based on the notion of an adjustable attentional focus and on measures of the storage capacity of attention or its scope. The predictions tested in the present article pertain to the scope of attention, whereas the adjustable nature of the focus allows consistency with other highly relevant research (e.g., Kane, Bleckley, Conway, & Engle, 2001).We do not judge the success of this endeavor by whether storage-and-processing measures or the proposed alternative, scope-of-attention measures, pick up more variance in aptitude tasks.Rather, success will be judged by whether the variance that is picked up contributes to our understanding of the processes underlyi...

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Section: Unresolved Theoretical Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rearranging terms from Equation 5, (6) In these same terms it can also be shown that, by substituting FA = 1-CR, Equation 3 based on Pashler (1988) can be restated as…”

Section: Unresolved Theoretical Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the capacity of attention: Its estimation and its role in working memory and cognitive aptitudes

Cowan

Elliott

Saults

et al. 2005

Cognitive Psychology

977

1,051

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“…Capacity is typically estimated using the change detection task, in which a set of items is presented briefly, disappears for a short delay, then reappears with either the same items or one changed item (e.g., Luck & Vogel, 1997). Capacity estimated from change detection performance are often derived with the formula proposed by Pashler (1988; see also Cowan, 2001; Rouder, Morey, Morey, & Cowan, 2011). …”

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confidence: 99%

Models provide specificity: Testing a proposed mechanism of visual working memory capacity development

Simmering

Patterson

2012

Cognitive Development

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Numerous studies have established that visual working memory has a limited capacity, and that capacity increases during childhood. However, debate continues over the source of capacity limits and its developmental increase. Simmering (2008) adapted a computational model of spatial cognitive development, the Dynamic Field Theory, to explain not only the source of capacity limitations but also the developmental mechanism. According to the model, capacity is limited by the balance between excitation and inhibition that maintains multiple neural representations simultaneously. Moreover, development is implemented according to the Spatial Precision Hypothesis, which proposes that excitatory and inhibitory connections strengthen throughout early childhood. Critically, these changes in connectivity result in increasing precision and stability of neural representations over development. Here we test this developmental mechanism by probing children’s memory in a single-item change detection task. Results confirmed the model’s predictions, providing further support for this account of visual working memory capacity development.

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“…Change detection for object switches and substitutions Change detection in visual short-term memory: The relative impact of pairwise switches and identity substitutions Several seminal studies have used the change detection paradigm to study human visual short-term memory (VSTM) low-capacity transient memory system proposed to hold visual information online to support on-going cognitive tasks (Luck & Vogel, 1997;Phillips, 1974;Pashler, 1988;Wheeler & Treisman, 2002;Alvarez & Cavanagh, 2004).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Changes often entail the exchange of two object locations, referred to as an object swap (Hollingworth, 2006) or switch (Simons, 1996), or the replacement of one or more objects by new objects, referred to as an object substitution (Luck & Vogel, 1997;Pashler, 1988) 1 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Change Detection in Visual Short-Term Memory

Sapkota

Pardhan

Linde

2015

Experimental Psychology

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Numerous kinds of visual events challenge our ability to keep track of objects that populate our visual environment from moment to moment. These include blinks, occlusion, shifting visual attention and changes to object's visual and spatial properties over time. These visual events may lead to objects falling out of our visual awareness but can also lead to unnoticed changes, such as undetected object replacements and positional exchanges. Current visual memory models do not predict which visual changes are likely to be the most difficult to detect. We examined the accuracy with which switches (where two objects exchange locations) and substitutions (where one or two objects are replaced) are detected. Inferior performance for one-object substitutions vs. two-objects switches, along with superior performance for two-object substitutions vs. two-object switches was found. Our results are interpreted in terms of object file theory, trade-offs between diffused and localized attention, and net visual modification.

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Familiarity and visual change detection

Cited by 933 publications

References 29 publications

On the capacity of attention: Its estimation and its role in working memory and cognitive aptitudes

On the capacity of attention: Its estimation and its role in working memory and cognitive aptitudes

Models provide specificity: Testing a proposed mechanism of visual working memory capacity development

Change Detection in Visual Short-Term Memory

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