Perceptual Asymmetries Are Preserved in Short-term Memory Tasks

Overview

Journal Atten Percept Psychophys

Publisher Springer

Specialties Psychiatry
Psychology

Date 2009 Nov 26

PMID 19933562

Citations 29

Authors

Leila Montaser-Kouhsari

Marisa Carrasco

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Visual performance is heterogeneous at isoeccentric locations; it is better on the horizontal than on the vertical meridian and worse at the upper than at the lower region of the vertical meridian (Carrasco, Talgar, & Cameron, 2001; Talgar & Carrasco, 2002). It is unknown whether these performance inhomogeneities are also present in spatial frequency tasks and whether asymmetries present during encoding of visual information also emerge in visual short-term memory (VSTM) tasks. Here, we investigated the similarity of the perceptual and VSTM tasks in spatial frequency discrimination (Experiments 1 and 2) and perceived spatial frequency (Experiments 3 and 4). We found that (1) performance in both simultaneous (perceptual) and delayed (VSTM) spatial frequency discrimination tasks varies as a function of location; it is better along the horizontal than along the vertical meridian; and (2) perceived spatial frequency in both tasks is higher along the horizontal than along the vertical meridian. These results suggest that perceived spatial frequency may mediate performance differences in VSTM tasks across the visual field, implying that the quality with which we encode information affects VSTM.

Citing Articles

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Wu W, Hafed Z Sci Rep. 2025; 15(1):2761.

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Asymmetries in foveal vision.

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The vertical position of visual information conditions spatial memory performance in healthy aging.

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Presaccadic preview shapes postsaccadic processing more where perception is poor.

Liu X, Melcher D, Carrasco M, Hanning N Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024; 121(37):e2411293121.

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