Visual working memory declines when more features must be remembered for each object

Oberauer, Klaus; Eichenberger, Simon

doi:10.3758/s13421-013-0333-6

Cited by 100 publications

(127 citation statements)

References 41 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

117

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…They noted that past research has largely focused on the nature of underlying limits that restrict the amount and quality of content that the system can store and that the nature of the content itself has had less attention. There is clearly some agreement about the importance of this issue as there is a growing VWM literature illustrating the complexities of the representations and processing involved (Bae, et al, 2014, Bae et al 2015Brady, Konkle, Alvarez, & Oliva, 2013;Oberauer & Eichenberger, 2013;Vergauwe, & Cowan, 2015).…”

Section: Representations Subtending Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Reconstructing the recent visual past: Hierarchical knowledge-based effects in visual working memory

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents two experiments that examine the influence of multiple levels of knowledge on visual working memory (VWM). Experiment 1 focused on memory for faces. Faces were selected from continua that were constructed by morphing two face photographs in 100 steps; half of the continua morphed a famous face into an unfamiliar one, while the other half used two unfamiliar faces. Participants studied six sequentially presented faces each from a different continuum, and at test they had to locate one of these within its continuum. Experiment 2 examined immediate memory for object sizes. On each trial, six images were shown; these were either all vegetables or all random shapes. Immediately after each list, one item was presented again, in a new random size, and participants reproduced its studied size. Results suggested that two levels of knowledge influenced VWM. First, there was an overall central-tendency bias whereby items were remembered as being closer to the overall average or central tokens (averaged across items and trials) than they actually were. Second, when object knowledge was available for the to-be-remembered items (i.e., famous face or typical size of a vegetable) a further bias was introduced in responses. The results extend the findings of Hemmer and Steyvers (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 80-87, 2009a) from episodic memory to VWM and contribute to the growing literature which illustrates the complexity and flexibility of the representations subtending VWM performance (e.g., Bae,

show abstract

Section: Representations Subtending Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Reconstructing the recent visual past: Hierarchical knowledge-based effects in visual working memory

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Generally, the number of elements that can be bound together within one synchronous oscillation is not limited. However, an increasing number of elements maintained for one binding slightly decreases the model's capacity (e.g., 7% of capacity is dropped between maintenance of four-element and two-element items), contrary to Vogel et al's (2001) data, but consistently with more recent observations (Oberauer & Eichenberger, 2013).…”

Section: The Present Modelmentioning

confidence: 54%

“…At the same time, the number of features bound does not affect the chance of spurious synchronizations. Accordingly, the authors have found empirical evidence that WM capacity is little affected by the number of features per object (but for the opposite evidence see Cowan, Blume, & Saults, 2013;Oberauer & Eichenberger, 2013), while the number of to-be-maintained objects heavily impacts performance. A similar idea of the temporary binding of features was realized computationally by Raffone and Wolters (2001), who, like Usher (1991, 1992), showed that five or less items may be the natural limit of the model's capacity.…”

Section: Oscillatory Models Of Wm and Reasoningmentioning

confidence: 95%

From neural oscillations to reasoning ability: Simulating the effect of the theta-to-gamma cycle length ratio on individual scores in a figural analogy test

Chuderski

Andrelczyk

2015

Cognitive Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…At one time, it was believed that adults’ working memory representations of objects include all of the objects’ physical features, inasmuch as participants could attend to 4 features of the objects with the same performance level as a preselected 1 feature of those same objects (Luck & Vogel, 1997). However, several studies have failed to replicate that finding, instead showing that memory of features is somewhat independent (Wang, Cao, Theeuwes, Olivers, & Wang, 2016) or that memory of any one kind of feature from multi-featured objects in an array (e.g., color) comes at the expense of memory for another kind of feature (e.g., shape) (Cowan et al, 2013; Hardman & Cowan, 2015; Oberauer & Eichenberger, 2013). …”

Section: Development Of Working Memory Capacity In Infancymentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental Objects in Working Memory

Cowan

2017

Advances in Child Development and Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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 at 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.

show abstract

Visual working memory declines when more features must be remembered for each object

Abstract: The article reports three experiments investigating

Cited by 100 publications

References 41 publications

Reconstructing the recent visual past: Hierarchical knowledge-based effects in visual working memory

Reconstructing the recent visual past: Hierarchical knowledge-based effects in visual working memory

From neural oscillations to reasoning ability: Simulating the effect of the theta-to-gamma cycle length ratio on individual scores in a figural analogy test

Mental Objects in Working Memory

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About