For decades, working memory (WM) has been a heated research topic in the field of cognitive psychology. However, most studies on WM presented visual stimuli on a two-dimensional plane, rarely involving depth perception. Several previous studies have investigated how depth information is stored in WM, and found that WM for depth is even more limited in capacity and the memory performance is poor compared to visual WM. In the present study, we used a change detection task to investigate whether dissociating memory items by different visual features, thereby to increase their perceptual separateness, can improve WM performance for depth. Memory items presented at various depth planes were bound with different colors (Experiments 1 and 3) or sizes (Experiment 2). The memory performance for depth locations of visual stimuli with homogeneous and heterogeneous appearances were tested and compared. The results showed a consistent pattern that although separating items with various feature values did not affect the overall memory performance, the manipulation significantly improved memory performance for the middle depth locations but impaired the performance for the boundary locations when observers fixated at the center of the whole depth volume. The memory benefits of feature separation can be attributed to enhanced individuation of memory items, therefore facilitating a more balanced allocation of attention and memory resources.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.