Is the binding of visual features in working memory resource-demanding?

Allen, Richard J.; Baddeley, Alan; Hitch, Graham J.

doi:10.1037/0096-3445.135.2.298

Cited by 434 publications

(707 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…The first is that, to the extent that a post-stimulus suffix passes the external attentional filter, it will interfere with memory and will do so more for recent items. This would be consistent with empirical evidence that the recency effect observed by Allen et al (2006) and others reflects cumulative retroactive interference on earlier items from subsequent items, the final item being entirely free from such interference. When a post-stimulus suffix is presented it will generate additional retroactive interference and this will be greater the more recent the item, resulting in a reduced recency effect.…”

Section: Insert Figure 1 Heresupporting

confidence: 89%

Executive and perceptual attention play different roles in visual working memory: Evidence from suffix and strategy effects.

Hu¹,

Hitch²,

Baddeley³

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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265

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Four experiments studied the interfering effects of a to-be-ignored Ôstimulus suffixÕ on cued recall of feature bindings for a series of objects. When each object was given equal weight (Experiment 1) or rewards favored recent items (Experiments 2 and 4), a recency effect emerged that was selectively reduced by a suffix. The reduction was greater for a ÔplausibleÕ suffix with features drawn from the same set as the memory items, in which case a feature of the suffix was frequently recalled as an intrusion error. Changing pay-offs to reward recall of early items led to a primacy effect alongside recency (Experiments 3 and 4). Primacy, like recency, was reduced by a suffix and the reduction was greater for a suffix with plausible features, such features often being recalled as intrusion errors. Experiment 4 revealed a tradeoff such that increased primacy came at the cost of a reduction in recency. These observations show that priority instructions and recency combine to determine a limited number of items that are the most accessible for immediate recall and yet at the same time the most vulnerable to interference. We interpret this outcome in terms of a labile, limited capacity Ôprivileged stateÕ controlled by both central executive processes and perceptual attention. We suggest further that this privileged state can be usefully interpreted as the focus of attention in the episodic buffer.

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Section: Insert Figure 1 Heresupporting

confidence: 89%

Executive and perceptual attention play different roles in visual working memory: Evidence from suffix and strategy effects.

Hu¹,

Hitch²,

Baddeley³

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

Self Cite

265

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Allen, Baddeley, & Hitch, 2006, 2014. This extends limited previous work with children using different visual stimuli (Burnett Heyes et al, 2012;Hitch et al 1988;Pickering et al 1998) to the current task and stimulus sets.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 70%

The limits of visual working memory in children: Exploring prioritization and recency effects with sequential presentation.

Berry¹,

Waterman²,

Baddeley³

et al. 2018

Developmental Psychology

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Recent research has demonstrated that, when instructed to prioritize a serial position in visual working memory, adults are able to boost performance for this selected item, at a cost to nonprioritized items (e.g. Hu et al., 2014). While executive control appears to play an important role in this ability, the increased likelihood of recalling the most recently presented item (i.e. the recency effect) is relatively automatic, possibly driven by perceptual mechanisms. In three experiments 7 to 10-year-old's ability to prioritize items in working memory was investigated using a sequential visual task (total N = 208). The relationship between individual differences in working memory and performance on the experimental task was also explored. Participants were unable to prioritize the first (Experiments 1 & 2) or final (Experiment 3) item in a 3-item sequence, while large recency effects for the final item were consistently observed across all experiments. The absence of a priority boost across three experiments indicates that children may not have the necessary executive resources to prioritize an item within a visual sequence, when directed to do so. In contrast, the consistent recency boosts for the final item indicate that children show automatic memory benefits for the most recently encountered stimulus. Finally, for the baseline condition in which children were instructed to remember all three items equally, additional working memory measures predicted performance at the first and second but not the third serial position, further supporting the proposed automaticity of the recency effect in visual working memory.

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“…According to this principle, it is very reasonable to accept that fewer objects than single features can be maintained. Our results concerning memory for cross-domain associations were more in line with Allen et al (2006) and Cowan et al (2012) for within-domain combinations and revealed a lower capacity for objects than single features. Cowan et al's idea of chunk decomposition could explain the results obtained in the present study and as such apply to the maintenance capacity limit of the episodic buffer.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

“…Two domains were investigated: the binding of visuospatial features into objects and of words in the comprehension and retention of prose. In the visuospatial domain, Allen et al (2006) assessed through probe recognition the retention of either isolated features such as shapes or colors or combinations of these features into integrated objects. In the former condition, participants were asked whether the probed color or shape was present in an original array of four shapes or four colors (i.e., individual feature conditions), whereas in the latter, they judged whether the probed feature combination had been present in an original set of four colored shapes, requiring a binding of the constituent features (i.e., binding condition).…”

Section: The Episodic Buffer and The Binding Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

The maintenance of cross-domain associations in the episodic buffer.

Langerock¹,

Vergauwe²,

Barrouillet³

2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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The episodic buffer has been described as a structure of working memory capable of maintaining multimodal information in an integrated format. Although the role of the episodic buffer in binding features into objects has received considerable attention, several of its characteristics have remained rather underexplored. This is the case for its maintenance capacity limits and its separability from domain-specific maintenance buffers. The present study addressed these questions, making use of a complex span paradigm in which participants were asked to maintain cross-domain (i.e., verbal-spatial) associations. The 1st experiment showed that the capacity limit for these cross-domain associations proved to be lower than the capacity limit for single features, and did not exceed 3. Cross-domain associations and single features depended, however, to the same extent on attentional resources for their maintenance. The 2nd experiment showed that domain-specific (verbal or spatial) resources were not involved in the maintenance of cross-domain information, revealing a clear distinction between the episodic buffer and the domain-specific buffers. Overall, in line with the episodic buffer hypothesis, these findings support the existence of a central system of limited capacity for the maintenance of cross-domain information.

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Is the binding of visual features in working memory resource-demanding?

Cited by 434 publications

References 47 publications

Executive and perceptual attention play different roles in visual working memory: Evidence from suffix and strategy effects.

Executive and perceptual attention play different roles in visual working memory: Evidence from suffix and strategy effects.

The limits of visual working memory in children: Exploring prioritization and recency effects with sequential presentation.

The maintenance of cross-domain associations in the episodic buffer.

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