Perceptual Learning And Visual Short-Term Memory: The Limitations And Mechanisms Of Interacting Processes
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is commonly perceived as a temporary buffer into which information is moved for retention across relatively short intervals.Guided by work on the "standard model" of working memory, these buffers are assumed to reside in modality-specific areas of the prefrontal cortex (PFC).Recent converging evidence has begun to call these conventional views into question, with a growing consensus that working memory is the emergent result of attention-guided activity across many areas of the brain.This "emergent-property" view suggests that working memory is sustained in part by the very same sensory areas involved in encoding external input.If visual short-term memory is represented and maintained on the same neural populations involved in common perceptual tasks as evidence suggests, we might expect possible interactions.The current thesis describes a series of experiments designed to build a detailed profile of these interactions.In Chapter 2 we establish the utility of using visual aftereffects as investigative tools in two behavioral experiments.In the first experiment we measure the magnitude of static and dynamic motion aftereffects before and after perceptual learning on a motion discrimination task using identical stimuli.Our results indicate that learning does not affect the duration of the aftereffects, strongly suggesting that improvements in discrimination are not mediated by changes in the underlying perceptual representations of the stimuli.Rather, our evidence supports the view that practice changes the relative contributions of perceptual outputs to decision-making areas.A second experiment rules
Authors: Van Horn, Myers Nicholas
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2522440435