Real-world spatial regularities affect visual working memory for objects

Abstract

Traditional memory research has focused on measuring and modeling the capacity of visual working memory for simple stimuli such as geometric shapes or colored disks. Although these studies have provided important insights, it is unclear how their findings apply to memory for more naturalistic stimuli. An important aspect of real-world scenes is that they contain a high degree of regularity: For instance, lamps appear above tables, not below them. In the present study, we tested whether such real-world spatial regularities affect working memory capacity for individual objects. Using a delayed change-detection task with concurrent verbal suppression, we found enhanced visual working memory performance for objects positioned according to real-world regularities, as compared to irregularly positioned objects. This effect was specific to upright stimuli, indicating that it did not reflect low-level grouping, because low-level grouping would be expected to equally affect memory for upright and inverted displays. These results suggest that objects can be held in visual working memory more efficiently when they are positioned according to frequently experienced real-world regularities. We interpret this effect as the grouping of single objects into larger representational units.

Typical retinotopic locations impact the time course of object coding

“…Our finding thus raises the question whether the previously reported regularity effects in multi-object perception can be reduced to the effects of typical individual object location. On a behavioral level, some previous studies oppose this notion by demonstrating that the benefits of multi-object regularities cannot be explained by the relative location of the constituent objects (Kaiser et al, 2014, 2015; Stein et al, 2015). Although these results suggest that positional regularities in multi-object and single-object processing offer complementary benefits, further research is needed.…”

“…Natural environments contain positional regularities on different levels, both on the levels of multiple (e.g., a lamps typically hang above tables) and individual objects (e.g., a lamp is typically in the upper visual field). Previous research has primarily focused on the latter: Recent behavioral studies have demonstrated that regularity structures in multi-object arrangement facilitate behavior in capacity-limited visual tasks (Gronau & Shachar, 2014; Kaiser et al, 2014; Kaiser, Stein, & Peelen, 2015; Stein, Kaiser, & Peelen, 2015), and neuroimaging studies demonstrated that they enable the brain to integrate information across objects that appear in frequently experienced arrangements (Baeck, Wagemans, & Op de Beeck, 2013; Kaiser & Peelen, 2018; Kaiser et al, 2014).…”

Gist in time: Scene semantics and structure enhance recall of searched objects

“…Both working memory and long-term memory have been shown to benefit from scene-related contextual factors, such as background information, correct spatial relations among objects, and semantic and functional relations among stimuli (Brewer & Treyens, 1981; Hollingworth, 2006; Kaiser et al, 2015; Gronau & Shachar, 2014). However, it is possible that the recruitment of such factors during search, which requires more engagement with the structural and semantic content, will cause better recall.…”

Working memory is not fixed-capacity: More active storage capacity for real-world objects than for simple stimuli

“…In addition, familiarity or stored knowledge can also increase working memory capacity estimates (15)(16)(17)(18). Furthermore, paradigms where interference is minimized with real-world objects also show that participants can remember a very large number of objects, also without reaching a fixed capacity limit (19).…”