Disruption of visual feature binding in working memory

Ueno, Taiji; Allen, Richard J.; Baddeley, Alan; Hitch, Graham J.; Saito, Satoru

doi:10.3758/s13421-010-0013-8

Cited by 80 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…several studies that show that the execution of a second task can interfere with memory for one or more stimuli that were presented several seconds earlier (Barrouillet et al, 2004(Barrouillet et al, , 2007Ricker & Cowan, 2010; see also Ueno, Allen, Baddeley, Hitch, & Saito, 2011), and there have also been several studies that found that a distractor can interfere with retention of a similar stimulus shown 1-5 s earlier (e.g., Magnussen & Greenlee, 1999;Magnussen, Greenlee, Asplund, Dyrnes, 1991;Vuontela, Rämä, Raninen, Aronen, & Carlson, 1999). An interesting and important difference between these findings and those of current experiments, however, is that the interference effects follow a markedly different time course.…”

Section: Relationship With Previous Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond a mask and against the bottleneck: Retroactive dual-task interference during working memory consolidation of a masked visual target.

Nieuwenstein¹,

Wyble

2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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While studies on visual memory commonly assume that the consolidation of a visual stimulus into working memory is interrupted by a trailing mask, studies on dual-task interference suggest that the consolidation of a stimulus can continue for several hundred milliseconds after a mask. As a result, estimates of the time course of working memory consolidation differ more than an order of magnitude. Here, we contrasted these opposing views by examining if and for how long the processing of a masked display of visual stimuli can be disturbed by a trailing 2-alternative forced choice task (2-AFC; a color discrimination task or a visual or auditory parity judgment task). The results showed that the presence of the 2-AFC task produced a pronounced retroactive interference effect that dissipated across stimulus onset asynchronies of 250 -1,000 ms, indicating that the processing elicited by the 2-AFC task interfered with the gradual consolidation of the earlier shown stimuli. Furthermore, this interference effect occurred regardless of whether the to-be-remembered stimuli comprised a string of letters or an unfamiliar complex visual shape, and it occurred regardless of whether these stimuli were masked. Conversely, the interference effect was reduced when the memory load for the 1st task was reduced, or when the 2nd task was a color detection task that did not require decision making. Taken together, these findings show that the formation of a durable and consciously accessible working memory trace for a briefly shown visual stimulus can be disturbed by a trailing 2-AFC task for up to several hundred milliseconds after the stimulus has been masked. By implication, the current findings challenge the common view that working memory consolidation involves an immutable central processing bottleneck, and they also make clear that consolidation does not stop when a stimulus is masked.Keywords: working-memory consolidation, backward masking, attentional blink, psychological refractory period, retroactive dual-task interferenceIn dealing with a rapid and ever-changing stream of visual sensory input, the storage of information in working memory forms a central requirement for many perceptual and cognitive tasks. While considerable insight has been gained into the quality and quantity of information that can be stored in working memory (e.g., Prinzmetal, Amiri, Allen, & Edwards, 1998;Wilken & Ma, 2004;Zhang & Luck, 2008), the mechanisms that mediate the initial transfer and consolidation of visual information into working memory remain poorly understood. As a case in point, consider the basic but important questions of how long it might take to consolidate a familiar visual stimulus such as a letter, and how this process might be affected when the letter is masked-a common procedure in studies on visual perception, attention, and memory. According to one influential perspective, the appearance of a mask would interrupt consolidation, and therefore the finding that people can recall about four letters from a 100-ms masked display en...

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Section: Relationship With Previous Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond a mask and against the bottleneck: Retroactive dual-task interference during working memory consolidation of a masked visual target.

Nieuwenstein¹,

Wyble

2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…It would be worthwhile to explore whether the control of focused attention operates in the same way for maintenance of novel category conjunctions, and how the requirement to form new incongruent conjunctions (proposed to be an effortful process) impacts on retention of items already held in memory. It would also be of interest to examine whether the apparent susceptibility of bound representations to environmental interference (Ueno, Allen, Baddeley, Hitch, & Saito, 2011) also extends to category conjunction retention. Exploring these questions would provide tests of whether the possible constraints on episodic buffer functioning (identified in research on visual feature binding) also apply to this very different form of conjunctive processing.…”

Section: Further Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The formation of novel social category conjunctions in working memory: A possible role for the episodic buffer?

Hutter

Allen

Wood

2015

Memory

Self Cite

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“…Prabhakaran et al suggested that the letters and locations were maintained as bound representations in memory, so that it was faster and easier to recognize the features of a probe that corresponded to the memory representation. Since then, increasing evidence has emerged of binding in memory (see, e.g., Alvarez & Thompson, 2009;Guérard, Tremblay, & Saint-Aubin, 2009a;Maybery et al, 2009;Treisman & Zhang, 2006;Ueno, Allen, Baddeley, Hitch, & Saito, 2011).…”

Section: Evidence For Binding In Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetric binding in serial memory for verbal and spatial information

et al. 2012

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As the number of studies showing that items can be retained as bound representations in memory increases, researchers are beginning to investigate how the different features are bound together. In the present study, we examined the relative importances of the verbal and spatial features in serial memory for visual stimuli. Participants were asked to memorize the order of series of letters presented visually in different locations on the computer screen. The results showed that manipulating the phonological similarity of the letters affected recall of their spatial locations, but that increasing the complexity of the spatial pattern had no effect on recall of the letters. This finding was observed in both order reconstruction (Exps. 1 and 2) and probe serial recall (Exps. 3 and 4), suggesting that verbal-spatial binding in serial memory for visual information is asymmetric.

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Disruption of visual feature binding in working memory

Cited by 80 publications

References 25 publications

Beyond a mask and against the bottleneck: Retroactive dual-task interference during working memory consolidation of a masked visual target.

Beyond a mask and against the bottleneck: Retroactive dual-task interference during working memory consolidation of a masked visual target.

The formation of novel social category conjunctions in working memory: A possible role for the episodic buffer?

Asymmetric binding in serial memory for verbal and spatial information

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