6533b7d7fe1ef96bd126912e

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Retro-dimension-cue benefit in visual working memory

Qiang LiuQiang LiuMaria GendronZhonghua HuChaoxiong YeTapani Ristaniemi

subject

MaleMemory loadArticle050105 experimental psychologyretro-object-cueTask (project management)visual working memoryYoung Adult03 medical and health sciences0302 clinical medicineDimension (vector space)Cognitive resource theoryReaction TimeHumans0501 psychology and cognitive sciencesta113MultidisciplinaryRecallWorking memory05 social sciencesInterval (music)Memory Short-TermFeature (computer vision)Mental RecallFemalePsychologyPhotic Stimulation030217 neurology & neurosurgeryCognitive psychology

description

AbstractIn visual working memory (VWM) tasks, participants’ performance can be improved by a retro-object-cue. However, previous studies have not investigated whether participants’ performance can also be improved by a retro-dimension-cue. Three experiments investigated this issue. We used a recall task with a retro-dimension-cue in all experiments. In Experiment 1, we found benefits from retro-dimension-cues compared to neutral cues. This retro-dimension-cue benefit is reflected in an increased probability of reporting the target, but not in the probability of reporting the non-target, as well as increased precision with which this item is remembered. Experiment 2 replicated the retro-dimension-cue benefit and showed that the length of the blank interval after the cue disappeared did not influence recall performance. Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiment 2 with a lower memory load. Our studies provide evidence that there is a robust retro-dimension-cue benefit in VWM. Participants can use internal attention to flexibly allocate cognitive resources to a particular dimension of memory representations. The results also support the feature-based storing hypothesis.

yearjournalcountryeditionlanguage
2016-10-24
http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-201611024547