The Experts below are selected from a list of 28155 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Steven J. Luck - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Why is information displaced from Visual Working Memory during Visual search
Visual cognition, 2010Co-Authors: Geoffrey F Woodman, Steven J. LuckAbstract:Research has shown that performing Visual search while maintaining representations in Visual Working Memory displaces up to one object's worth of information from Memory. This Memory displacement has previously been attributed to a nonspecific disruption of the Memory representation by the mere presentation of the Visual search array, and the goal of the present study was to determine whether it instead reflects the use of Visual Working Memory in the actual search process. The first hypothesis tested was that Working Memory displacement occurs because observers preemptively discard about an object's worth of information from Visual Working Memory in anticipation of performing Visual search. Second, we tested the hypothesis that on target absent trials no information is displaced from Visual Working Memory because no target is entered into Memory when search is completed. Finally, we tested whether Visual Working Memory displacement is due to the need to select a response to the search array. The findings...
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sudden death and gradual decay in Visual Working Memory
Psychological Science, 2009Co-Authors: Weiwei Zhang, Steven J. LuckAbstract:General Douglas MacArthur famously remarked that “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away” (General Douglas MacArthur, April 19, 1951). For decades, researchers have concluded that Visual Working memories, like old soldiers, fade away gradually, becoming progressively less precise as they are retained for longer periods of time. However, these conclusions were based on threshold estimation procedures in which the complete termination of a Memory could artifactually produce the appearance of lower precision. Here we use a recall-based Visual Working Memory paradigm that provides separate measures of the probability that a Memory is available and the precision of the Memory when it is available. Using this paradigm, we demonstrate that Visual Working Memory representations may be retained for several seconds with little or no loss of precision but that they may terminate suddenly and completely during this period.
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The Influence of Similarity on Visual Working Memory Representations.
Visual cognition, 2009Co-Authors: Po-han Lin, Steven J. LuckAbstract:In verbal Memory, similarity between items in Memory often leads to interference and impaired Memory performance. The present study sought to determine whether analogous interference effects would be observed in Visual Working Memory by varying the similarity of the to-be-remembered objects in a color change-detection task. Instead of leading to interference and impaired performance, increased similarity among the items being held in Memory led to improved performance. Moreover, when two similar colors were presented along with one dissimilar color, Memory performance was better for the similar colors than for the dissimilar color. Similarity produced better performance even when the objects were presented sequentially and even when Memory for the first item in the sequence was tested. These findings show that similarity does not lead to interference between representations in Visual Working Memory. Instead, similarity may lead to improved task performance, possibly due to increased stability or precision of the Memory representations during maintenance.
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Perceptual organization influences Visual Working Memory.
Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2003Co-Authors: Geoffrey F Woodman, Shaun P. Vecera, Steven J. LuckAbstract:Previous studies have demonstrated that top-down factors can bias the storage of information in Visual Working Memory. However, relatively little is known about the role that bottom-up stimulus characteristics play in Visual Working Memory storage. In the present study, subjects performed a change detection task in which the to-be-remembered objects were organized in accordance with Gestalt grouping principles. When an attention-capturing cue was presented at the location of one object, other objects that were perceptually grouped with the cued object were more likely to be stored in Working Memory than were objects that were not grouped with the cued object. Thus, objects that are grouped together tend to be stored together, indicating that bottom-up perceptual organization influences the storage of information in Visual Working Memory.
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Voluntary and automatic attentional control of Visual Working Memory
Perception & psychophysics, 2002Co-Authors: Brandon K. Schmidt, Geoffrey F Woodman, Edward K. Vogel, Steven J. LuckAbstract:Previous studies of attention-directing cues have focused largely on the effects of cuing on perceptual processes, but cuing may also influence the transfer of perceptual representations into Visual Working Memory. In the present study, we examined this potential role of cues, using both predictive and nonpredictive cues in the context of a Visual Working Memory task. Each trial began with a cue, followed by an array of six colored squares, a delay interval, and then a probe square presented at the location of one of the squares in the previous array. The subjects were required to indicate whether the color of the probe square was the same as the color of the square that had previously been presented at the same location. Performance on this Working Memory task was more accurate when the cued location was probed than when an uncued location was probed, even when the cued location was no more likely to be probed than any of the uncued locations. An additional experiment using the abrupt-onset paradigm of Yantis and Jonides (1984) yielded similar results. Thus, Visual transients may automatically influence the transfer of perceptual representations into Visual Working Memory.
Geoffrey F Woodman - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Visual Working Memory load does not eliminate visuomotor repetition effects
Attention Perception & Psychophysics, 2019Co-Authors: Jason Rajsic, Matthew D. Hilchey, Geoffrey F Woodman, Jay PrattAbstract:When we respond to a stimulus, our ability to quickly execute this response depends on how combinations of stimulus and response features match to previous combinations of stimulus and response features. Some kind of Memory representations must be underlying these visuomotor repetition effects. In this paper, we tested the hypothesis that Visual Working Memory stores the stimulus information that gives rise to these effects. Participants discriminated the colors of successive stimuli while holding either three locations or colors in Visual Working Memory. If Visual Working Memory maintains the information about a previous event that leads to visuomotor repetition effects, then occupying Working Memory with colors or locations should selectively disrupt color–response and location–response repetition effects. The results of two experiments showed that neither color nor spatial Memory load eliminated visuomotor repetition effects. Since Working Memory load did not disrupt repetition effects, it is unlikely that Visual Working Memory resources are used to store the information that underlies visuomotor repetitions effects. Instead, these results are consistent with the view that visuomotor repetition effects stem from automatic long-term Memory retrieval, but can also be accommodated by supposing separate buffers for Visual Working Memory and response selection.
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Can we throw information out of Visual Working Memory and does this
2014Co-Authors: Ashleigh M. Maxcey, Geoffrey F WoodmanAbstract:11 12 Abstract 13 14 Can we entirely erase a temporary Memory representation from mind? This question has been 15 addressed in several recent studies that tested the specific hypothesis that a representation can be 16 erased from Visual Working Memory based on a cue that indicated that the representation was no 17 longer necessary for the task. In addition to behavioral results that are consistent with the idea that we 18 can throw information out of Visual Working Memory, recent neurophysiological recordings support 19 this proposal. However, given the infinite capacity of long-term Memory, it is unclear whether 20 throwing a representation out of Visual Working Memory really removes its effects on Memory 21 entirely. In this paper we advocate for an approach that examines our ability to erase Memory 22
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Directed Forgetting and Directed Remembering in Visual Working Memory
Journal of experimental psychology. Learning memory and cognition, 2012Co-Authors: Melonie Williams, Geoffrey F WoodmanAbstract:A defining characteristic of Visual Working Memory is its limited capacity. This means that it is crucial to maintain only the most relevant information in Visual Working Memory. However, empirical research is mixed as to whether it is possible to selectively maintain a subset of the information previously encoded into Visual Working Memory. Here we examined the ability of participants to use cues to either forget or remember a subset of the information already stored in Visual Working Memory. In Experiment 1, participants were cued to either forget or remember 1 of 2 groups of colored squares during a change-detection task. We found that both types of cues aided performance in the Visual Working Memory task but that observers benefited more from a cue to remember than a cue to forget a subset of the objects. In Experiment 2, we show that the previous findings, which indicated that directed-forgetting cues are ineffective, were likely due to the presence of invalid cues that appeared to cause observers to disregard such cues as unreliable. In Experiment 3, we recorded event-related potentials and show that an electrophysiological index of focused maintenance is elicited by cues that indicate which subset of information in Visual Working Memory needs to be remembered, ruling out alternative explanations of the behavioral effects of retention-interval cues. The present findings demonstrate that observers can focus maintenance mechanisms on specific objects in Visual Working Memory based on cues indicating future task relevance.
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Attentional Templates in Visual Working Memory
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2011Co-Authors: Nancy B. Carlisle, Jason T. Arita, Deborah Pardo, Geoffrey F WoodmanAbstract:Most theories of attention propose that we maintain attentional templates in Visual Working Memory to control what information is selected. In the present study, we directly tested this proposal by measuring the contralateral-delay activity (CDA) of human event-related potentials during Visual search tasks in which the target is cued on each trial. Here we show that the CDA can be used to measure the maintenance of attentional templates in Visual Working Memory while processing complex Visual scenes. In addition, this method allowed us to directly observe the shift from Working Memory to long-term Memory representations controlling attention as learning occurred and experience accrued searching for the same target object. Our findings provide definitive support for several critical proposals made in theories of attention, learning, and automaticity.
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Visual Working Memory contaminates perception
Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 2011Co-Authors: Min Suk Kang, Sang Wook Hong, Randolph Blake, Geoffrey F WoodmanAbstract:Indirect evidence suggests that the contents of Visual Working Memory may be maintained within sensory areas early in the Visual hierarchy. We tested this possibility using a well-studied motion repulsion phenomenon in which perception of one direction of motion is distorted when another direction of motion is viewed simultaneously. We found that observers misperceived the actual direction of motion of a single motion stimulus if, while viewing that stimulus, they were holding a different motion direction in Visual Working Memory. Control experiments showed that none of a variety of alternative explanations could account for this repulsion effect induced by Working Memory. Our findings provide compelling evidence that Visual Working Memory representations directly interact with the same neural mechanisms as those involved in processing basic sensory events.
Edward K. Vogel - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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δ9 tetrahydrocannabinol thc impairs Visual Working Memory performance
bioRxiv, 2020Co-Authors: Kirsten Adam, Edward K. Vogel, Manoj K Doss, Elisa Pabon, Harriet De WitAbstract:With the increasing prevalence of legal cannabis use and availability, there is an urgent need to identify cognitive impairments related to its use. It is widely believed that cannabis, or its main psychoactive component Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), impairs Working Memory, i.e., the ability to temporarily hold information in mind. However, our review of the literature yielded surprisingly little empirical support for an effect of THC or cannabis on Working Memory. We thus conducted a study with 3 main goals: (1) quantify the effect of THC on Visual Working Memory in a well-powered sample (2) test the potential role of cognitive effects (mind-wandering and metacognition) in disrupting Working Memory, and (3) demonstrate how insufficient sample size and task duration reduce the likelihood of detecting a drug effect. We conducted two double-blind, counterbalanced experiments in which healthy adults (N=23, 23) performed a sensitive and validated Visual Working Memory task (the "Discrete Whole-Report task", 90 trials) after administration of THC (7.5 and/or 15 mg oral) or placebo. We also assessed self-reported "mind-wandering" (Exp 1) and metacognitive accuracy about ongoing task performance (Exp 2). THC impaired Working Memory performance (d = .65), increased mind-wandering (Exp 1), and decreased metacognitive accuracy about task performance (Exp 2). Thus, the findings indicate that THC does impair Visual Working Memory, and that this impairment may be related to both increased mind-wandering and decreased monitoring of task performance. Finally, we used a downsampling procedure to illustrate the effects of task length and sample size on power to detect the acute effect of THC on Working Memory.
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Visual Working Memory.
Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science, 2013Co-Authors: Irida Mance, Edward K. VogelAbstract:Visual Working Memory (VWM), the system of storing, manipulating, and utilizing, Visual information is fundamental to many cognitive acts. Exploring the limitations of this system is essential to understand the characteristics of higher-order cognition, since at a basic level, VWM is the interface through which we interact with our environment. Given its important function, this system has become a very active area of research in the recent years. Here, we examine current models of VWM, along with the proposed reasons for what limits its capacity. This is followed by a short description of recent neural findings that have helped constrain models of VWM. In closing, we focus on work exploring individual differences in Working Memory capacity, and what these findings reveal about the intimate relationship between VWM and attention. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:179-190. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1219 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
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the effects of two types of sleep deprivation on Visual Working Memory capacity and filtering efficiency
PLOS ONE, 2012Co-Authors: Sean P A Drummond, Edward K. Vogel, Dane E Anderson, Laura D Straus, Veronica B PerezAbstract:Sleep deprivation has adverse consequences for a variety of cognitive functions. The exact effects of sleep deprivation, though, are dependent upon the cognitive process examined. Within Working Memory, for example, some component processes are more vulnerable to sleep deprivation than others. Additionally, the differential impacts on cognition of different types of sleep deprivation have not been well studied. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of one night of total sleep deprivation and 4 nights of partial sleep deprivation (4 hours in bed/night) on two components of Visual Working Memory: capacity and filtering efficiency. Forty-four healthy young adults were randomly assigned to one of the two sleep deprivation conditions. All participants were studied: 1) in a well-rested condition (following 6 nights of 9 hours in bed/night); and 2) following sleep deprivation, in a counter-balanced order. Visual Working Memory testing consisted of two related tasks. The first measured Visual Working Memory capacity and the second measured the ability to ignore distractor stimuli in a Visual scene (filtering efficiency). Results showed neither type of sleep deprivation reduced Visual Working Memory capacity. Partial sleep deprivation also generally did not change filtering efficiency. Total sleep deprivation, on the other hand, did impair performance in the filtering task. These results suggest components of Visual Working Memory are differentially vulnerable to the effects of sleep deprivation, and different types of sleep deprivation impact Visual Working Memory to different degrees. Such findings have implications for operational settings where individuals may need to perform with inadequate sleep and whose jobs involve receiving an array of Visual information and discriminating the relevant from the irrelevant prior to making decisions or taking actions (e.g., baggage screeners, air traffic controllers, military personnel, health care providers).
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Event-related potential measures of Visual Working Memory.
Clinical EEG and neuroscience, 2006Co-Authors: Trafton Drew, Andrew Mccollough, Edward K. VogelAbstract:Visual Working Memory is a limited capacity system that temporarily maintains information about objects in the immediate Visual environment. Psychophysical experiments have shown that most people a...
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Voluntary and automatic attentional control of Visual Working Memory
Perception & psychophysics, 2002Co-Authors: Brandon K. Schmidt, Geoffrey F Woodman, Edward K. Vogel, Steven J. LuckAbstract:Previous studies of attention-directing cues have focused largely on the effects of cuing on perceptual processes, but cuing may also influence the transfer of perceptual representations into Visual Working Memory. In the present study, we examined this potential role of cues, using both predictive and nonpredictive cues in the context of a Visual Working Memory task. Each trial began with a cue, followed by an array of six colored squares, a delay interval, and then a probe square presented at the location of one of the squares in the previous array. The subjects were required to indicate whether the color of the probe square was the same as the color of the square that had previously been presented at the same location. Performance on this Working Memory task was more accurate when the cued location was probed than when an uncued location was probed, even when the cued location was no more likely to be probed than any of the uncued locations. An additional experiment using the abrupt-onset paradigm of Yantis and Jonides (1984) yielded similar results. Thus, Visual transients may automatically influence the transfer of perceptual representations into Visual Working Memory.
Timothy F. Brady - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Scaling up Visual attention and Visual Working Memory to the real world
2020Co-Authors: Timothy F. Brady, Viola S. Störmer, Anna Shafer-skelton, Jamal R. Williams, Angus F. Chapman, Hayden SchillAbstract:Both Visual attention and Visual Working Memory tend to be studied with very simple stimuli and low-level paradigms, designed to allow us to understand the representations and processes in detail, or with fully realistic stimuli that make such precise understanding difficult but are more representative of the real world. In this chapter we argue for an intermediate approach in which Visual attention and Visual Working Memory are studied by scaling up from the simplest settings to more complex settings that capture some aspects of the complexity of the real-world, while still remaining in the realm of well-controlled stimuli and well-understood tasks. We believe this approach, which we have been taking in our labs, will allow a more generalizable set of knowledge about Visual attention and Visual Working Memory while maintaining the rigor and control that is typical of vision science and psychophysics studies.
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Scaling up Visual attention and Visual Working Memory to the real world
Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 2019Co-Authors: Timothy F. Brady, Viola S. Störmer, Anna Shafer-skelton, Jamal R. Williams, Angus Chapman, Hayden M. SchillAbstract:Abstract Both Visual attention and Visual Working Memory tend to be studied either with very simple stimuli and low-level paradigms, which are designed to allow us to understand the representations and processes in detail, or with fully realistic stimuli that make such precise understanding difficult but are more representative of the real world. In this chapter we argue for an intermediate approach in which Visual attention and Visual Working Memory are studied by scaling up from the simplest settings to more complex settings that capture some aspects of the complexity of the real-world, while still remaining in the realm of well-controlled stimuli and well-understood tasks. We believe this approach, which we have been taking in our labs, will allow a generalizable set of knowledge about Visual attention and Visual Working Memory while maintaining the rigor and control that is typical of vision science and psychophysics studies.
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Modeling Visual Working Memory with the MemToolbox
J. Vis., 2013Co-Authors: Jordan W Suchow, Daryl Fougnie, Timothy F. Brady, George A. AlvarezAbstract:The MemToolbox is a collection of MATLAB functions for modeling Visual Working Memory. In support of its goal to provide a full suite of data analysis tools, the toolbox includes implementations of popular models of Visual Working Memory, real and simulated data sets, Bayesian and maximum likelihood estimation procedures for fitting models to data, Visualizations of data and fit, validation routines, model comparison metrics, and experiment scripts. The MemToolbox is released under the permissive BSD license and is available at http://memtoolbox.org.
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hierarchical encoding in Visual Working Memory ensemble statistics bias Memory for individual items
Psychological Science, 2011Co-Authors: Timothy F. Brady, George A. AlvarezAbstract:Influential models of Visual Working Memory treat each item to be stored as an independent unit and assume that there are no interactions between items. However, real-world displays have structure that provides higher-order constraints on the items to be remembered. Even in the case of a display of simple colored circles, observers can compute statistics, such as mean circle size, to obtain an overall summary of the display. We examined the influence of such an ensemble statistic on Visual Working Memory. We report evidence that the remembered size of each individual item in a display is biased toward the mean size of the set of items in the same color and the mean size of all items in the display. This suggests that Visual Working Memory is constructive, encoding displays at multiple levels of abstraction and integrating across these levels, rather than maintaining a veridical representation of each item independently.
Árni Kristjánsson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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How Visual Working Memory contents influence priming of Visual attention
Psychological Research, 2018Co-Authors: Nancy B. Carlisle, Árni KristjánssonAbstract:Recent evidence shows that when the contents of Visual Working Memory overlap with targets and distractors in a pop-out search task, intertrial priming is inhibited (Kristjánsson, Sævarsson & Driver, Psychon Bull Rev 20(3):514–521, 2013 , Experiment 2, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review ). This may reflect an interesting interaction between implicit short-term Memory—thought to underlie intertrial priming—and explicit Visual Working Memory. Evidence from a non-pop-out search task suggests that it may specifically be holding distractors in Visual Working Memory that disrupts intertrial priming (Cunningham & Egeth, Psychol Sci 27(4):476–485, 2016 , Experiment 2, Psychological Science ). We examined whether the inhibition of priming depends on whether feature values in Visual Working Memory overlap with targets or distractors in the pop-out search, and we found that the inhibition of priming resulted from holding distractors in Visual Working Memory. These results are consistent with separate mechanisms of target and distractor effects in intertrial priming, and support the notion that the impact of implicit short-term Memory and explicit Visual Working Memory can interact when each provides conflicting attentional signals.
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How Visual Working Memory contents influence priming of Visual attention.
Psychological research, 2017Co-Authors: Nancy B. Carlisle, Árni KristjánssonAbstract:Recent evidence shows that when the contents of Visual Working Memory overlap with targets and distractors in a pop-out search task, intertrial priming is inhibited (Kristjansson, Saevarsson & Driver, Psychon Bull Rev 20(3):514–521, 2013, Experiment 2, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review). This may reflect an interesting interaction between implicit short-term Memory—thought to underlie intertrial priming—and explicit Visual Working Memory. Evidence from a non-pop-out search task suggests that it may specifically be holding distractors in Visual Working Memory that disrupts intertrial priming (Cunningham & Egeth, Psychol Sci 27(4):476–485, 2016, Experiment 2, Psychological Science). We examined whether the inhibition of priming depends on whether feature values in Visual Working Memory overlap with targets or distractors in the pop-out search, and we found that the inhibition of priming resulted from holding distractors in Visual Working Memory. These results are consistent with separate mechanisms of target and distractor effects in intertrial priming, and support the notion that the impact of implicit short-term Memory and explicit Visual Working Memory can interact when each provides conflicting attentional signals.
