Work

Flexibility in visual working memory: Accurate change detection in the face of irrelevant variations in position

Year: 2012

Type: article

Abstract: Many recent studies of visual working memory have used change-detection tasks in which subjects view sequential displays and are asked to report whether they are identical or if one object has changed. A key question is whether the memory system used to perform this task is sufficiently flexible to detect changes in object identity independent of spatial transformations, but previous research has yielded contradictory results. To address this issue, the present study compared standard change-detection tasks with tasks in which the objects varied in size or position between successive arrays. Performance was nearly identical across the standard and transformed tasks unless the task implicitly encouraged spatial encoding. These results resolve the discrepancies in prior studies and demonstrate that the visual working memory system can detect changes in object identity across spatial transformations.

Source: Visual Cognition

DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2011.630694

Authors: Geoffrey F. Woodman, Edward K. Vogel, Steven J. Luck

Institutions: Vanderbilt University, University of Oregon, University of California, Davis

Language: English

Topic: Visual perception and processing mechanisms

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Eye Institute

Award: Comparative electrophysiology: Visual event-related potentials and oscillations