ERIC Number: EJ1176613
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018-Apr
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
EISSN: N/A
Sequential Whole Report Accesses Different States in Visual Working Memory
Peters, Benjamin; Rahm, Benjamin; Czoschke, Stefan; Barnes, Catherine; Kaiser, Jochen; Bledowski, Christoph
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v44 n4 p588-603 Apr 2018
Working memory (WM) enables a rapid access to a limited number of items that are no longer physically present. WM studies usually involve the encoding and retention of multiple items, while probing a single item only. Hence, little is known about how well multiple items can be reported from WM. Here we asked participants to successively report each of up to 8 encoded Gabor patches from WM. Recall order was externally cued, and stimulus orientations had to be reproduced on a continuous dimension. Participants were able to sequentially report items from WM with an above-chance precision even at high set sizes. It is important that we observed that precision varied systematically with report order: It dropped steeply from the first to the second report but decreased only slightly thereafter. The observed trajectory of precision decrease across reports was better captured as a discontinuous rather than an exponential function, suggesting that items were reported from different states in visual WM. The following 3 experiments replicated these findings. In particular, they showed that the observed drop could not be explained by a retro-cueing benefit of the first report, a longer delay duration for later reports or a visual interference effect of the first report. Instead, executive interference of the first report reduced precision of subsequent reports. Together, the results show that a sequential whole-report procedure allows the assessment of qualitatively different states in visual WM.
Descriptors: Short Term Memory, Visual Perception, Recall (Psychology), Cues, Visual Stimuli, Cognitive Processes, Interference (Learning), Foreign Countries, College Students, Acoustics, Statistical Analysis, Accuracy
American Psychological Association. Journals Department, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002. Tel: 800-374-2721; Tel: 202-336-5510; Fax: 202-336-5502; e-mail: order@apa.org; Web site: http://www.apa.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Germany
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A