Relating color working memory and color perception

Allred, Sarah; Flombaum, Jonathan

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2014.06.002

Cited by 26 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The most critical component of our proposed model is the psychophysical similarity function that explains how familiarity spreads within a stimulus space (e.g., across the color wheel). While previous work has documented local inhomogeneities in the structure of stimulus spaces [12][13][14] we were primarily interested in the global structure of similarity: for a stimulus 10 degrees away on the color wheel from a target color (regardless of what the target color is), how similar is this color to the target on average? Thus, we measured how similarity scales with distance measured in terms of degrees along the color wheel (Methods 1).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychophysical Scaling Reveals a Unified Theory of Visual Memory Strength

Schurgin

Wixted

Brady

2018

Preprint

211

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Limits on the storage capacity of working memory have been investigated for decades, but the nature of those limits remains elusive. An important but largely overlooked consideration in this research concerns the relationship between the physical properties of stimuli used in visual working memory tasks and their psychological properties. Here, we show that the relationship between physical distance in stimulus space and the psychological confusability of items as measured in a perceptual task is non-linear. Taking into account this relationship leads to a parsimonious conceptualization of visual working memory, greatly simplifying the models needed to account for performance, allowing generalization to new stimulus spaces, and providing a mapping between tasks that have been thought to measure distinct qualities. In particular, performance across a variety of working memory tasks can be explained by a oneparameter model implemented within a signal detection framework. Moreover, despite the system-level distinctions between working and long-term memory, after taking into account psychological distance we find a strong affinity between the theoretical frameworks that guide both systems, as performance is accurately described using the same straightforward signal detection framework.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychophysical Scaling Reveals a Unified Theory of Visual Memory Strength

Schurgin

Wixted

Brady

2018

Preprint

211

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“…The two biological motions (BMs) in the memory array are of yellow and red color; the BM in the probe is of magenta color. It is worth noting that since the current task is a high-level cognitive task, we did not calibrate and equalize the luminance of the used colors, which is commonly performed in low-level vision studies (Allred & Flombaum, 2014). However, the used colors of BMs on the screen were reported to be clear and differentiable according by the participants.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agent identity drives adaptive encoding of biological motion into working memory

et al. 2019

Journal of Vision

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To engage in normal social interactions, we have to encode human biological motions (BMs, e.g., walking and jumping), which is one of the most salient and biologically significant types of kinetic information encountered in everyday life, into working memory (WM). Critically, each BM in real life is produced by a distinct person, carrying a dynamic motion signature (i.e., identity). Whether agent identity influences the WM processing of BMs remains unknown. Here, we addressed this question by examining whether memorizing BMs with different identities promoted the WM processing of task-irrelevant clothing colors. Two opposing hypotheses were tested: (a) WM only stores the target action (element-based hypothesis) and (b) WM stores both action and irrelevant clothing color (event-based hypothesis), interpreting each BM as an event. We required participants to memorize actions that either performed by one agent or distinct agents, while ignoring clothing colors. Then we examined whether the irrelevant color was also stored in WM by probing a distracting effect: If the color was extracted into WM, the change of irrelevant color in the probe would lead to a significant distracting effect on action performance. We found that WM encoding of BMs was adaptive: Once the memorized actions had different identities, WM adopted an event-based encoding mode regardless of memory load and probe identity (Experiment 1, different-identity group of Experiment 2, and Experiment 3). However, WM used an elementbased encoding mode when memorized-actions shared the same identity (same-identity group of Experiment 2) or were inverted (Experiment 4). Overall, these findings imply that agent identity information has a significant effect on the WM processing of BMs.

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“…More generally, we and others have noted that although color constancy is often referred to as a purely perceptual phenomenon, it is both practically and theoretically difficult to isolate the perceptual and memory contributions to matching surfaces between illuminants (Allen, Beilock, & Shevell, 2012; Allred & Flombaum, 2014; Jin & Shevell, 1996; Ling & Hurlbert, 2008; Olkkonen & Allred, 2014). Thus, it should not be surprising that the illumination and delay conditions likely share working memory as a common source of error.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, researchers motivated by understanding the representation of color have used memory to make inferences about the representation of color at different levels of the visual system (cf. Allred & Flombaum, 2014; Brady et al, 2011; Olivers & Schreij, 2014). Although elaborating on the differences in approach is beyond the scope of this paper, we here outline some main conclusions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of memory and context changes on color matches to real objects

Allred

Olkkonen

2015

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Real-world color identification tasks often require matching the color of objects between contexts and after a temporal delay, thus placing demands on both perceptual and memory processes. Although the mechanisms of matching colors between different contexts have been widely studied under the rubric of color constancy, little research has investigated the role of long-term memory in such tasks or how memory interacts with color constancy. To investigate this relationship, observers made color matches to real study objects that spanned color space, and we independently manipulated the illumination impinging on the objects, the surfaces in which objects were embedded, and the delay between seeing the study object and selecting its color match. Adding a 10-min delay increased both the bias and variability of color matches compared to a baseline condition. These memory errors were well accounted for by modeling memory as a noisy but unbiased version of perception constrained by the matching methods. Surprisingly, we did not observe significant increases in errors when illumination and surround changes were added to the 10-minute delay, although the context changes alone did elicit significant errors.

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Relating color working memory and color perception

Cited by 26 publications

References 15 publications

Psychophysical Scaling Reveals a Unified Theory of Visual Memory Strength

Psychophysical Scaling Reveals a Unified Theory of Visual Memory Strength

Agent identity drives adaptive encoding of biological motion into working memory

The effect of memory and context changes on color matches to real objects

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