No Fixed Item Limit in Visuospatial Working Memory

Overview

Journal Cortex

Specialties Neurology
Psychology
Social Sciences

Date 2016 Aug 28

PMID 27565636

Citations 44

Authors

Sebastian Schneegans

Paul M Bays

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Investigations of working memory capacity in the visual domain have converged on the concept of a limited supply of a representational medium, flexibly distributed between objects. Current debate centers on whether this medium is continuous, or quantized into 2 or 3 memory "slots". The latter model makes the strong prediction that, if an item in memory is probed, behavioral parameters will plateau when the number of items is the same or more than the number of slots. Here we examine short-term memory for object location using a two-dimensional pointing task. We show that recall variability for items in memory increases monotonically from 1 to 8 items. Using a novel method to isolate only those trials on which a participant correctly identifies the target, we show that response latency also increases monotonically from 1 to 8 items. We argue that both these findings are incompatible with a quantized model.

Citing Articles

Extended Reality to Assess Short-Term Spatial Memory-A Comparative Study of Mixed Reality, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality.

Ponce D, Mendez-Lopez M, Lluch J, Juan M Sensors (Basel). 2025; 24(24.

PMID: 39771675 PMC: 11679164. DOI: 10.3390/s24247938.

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation over the Posterior Parietal Cortex Increases Nontarget Retrieval during Visual Working Memory.

Ye S, Wu M, Yao C, Xue G, Cai Y eNeuro. 2024; 11(11.

PMID: 39500573 PMC: 11697231. DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0265-24.2024.

Intrinsic functional networks for distinct sources of error in visual working memory.

Li X, Oestreich L, Rangelov D, Levy-Bencheton D, OSullivan M Cereb Cortex. 2024; 34(10).

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Evidence for the Beneficial Effect of Reward on Working Memory: A Meta-Analytic Study.

Wang W, Yan X, He X, Qian J J Intell. 2024; 12(9).

PMID: 39330467 PMC: 11433210. DOI: 10.3390/jintelligence12090088.

TDCS over PPC or DLPFC does not improve visual working memory capacity.

Jiang S, Jones M, von Bastian C Commun Psychol. 2024; 2(1):20.

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