It has long been known that memory need not be a literal reproduction of the past but may be a constructive process. To say that memory is a constructive process is to say that the encoded content may differ from the retrieved content. At the same time, memory is bound by the authenticity constraint which states that the memory content must be true to the subject's original perception of reality. This paper addresses the question of how (...) the constructive nature of visual memory can be reconciled with the authenticity constraint. In what respect and to what extent may the content of a visual memory differ from the original perceptual state while still adequately reflecting the subject's original perception? (shrink)

Although O'Regan & Noë (O&N) claim that the world may serve as the viewers' external visual memory, findings from the field of memory research have demonstrated the existence of internal visual representations. These representations are stored in the viewer's brain, contain information regarding visual objects and their relations, guide subsequent exploration of the visual world and promote change detection.

Dissociation is a phenomenon common in a number of psychological disorders and has been frequently suggested to impair memory for traumatic events. In this study we explored the effects of dissociation on visual memory. A dissociative state was induced experimentally using a mirror-gazing task and its short-term effects on memory performance were investigated. Sixty healthy individuals took part in the experiment. Induced dissociation impaired visual memory performance relative to a control condition; however, the degree (...) of dissociation was not associated with lower memory scores in the experimental group. The results have theoretical and practical implications for individuals who experience frequent dissociative states such as patients with posttraumatic stress disorder. (shrink)

The current contents of visual working memory can be disrupted by previously formed memories. This phenomenon is known as proactive interference, and it can be used to index the availability of old memories. However, there is uncertainty about the robustness and lifetime of proactive interference, which raises important questions about the role of temporal factors in forgetting. The present study assessed different factors that were expected to influence the persistence of proactive interference over an inter-trial interval in the (...) visual recent probes task. In three experiments, participants encoded arrays of targets and then determined whether a single probe matched one of those targets. On some trials, the probe matched an item from the previous trial, whereas on other trials the probe matched a more distant item. Prior studies have found that recent negative probes can increase errors and slow response times in comparison to non-recent negative probes, and this offered a behavioral measure of proactive interference. In Experiment 1, factors of array size and inter-trial interval were manipulated in the recent probes task. There was a reduction in proactive interference when a longer delay separated trials on one measure, but only when participants encoded two targets. When working memory capacity was strained by increasing the array size to four targets, proactive interference became stronger after the long delay. In Experiment 2, the inter-trial interval length was again manipulated, along with stimulus novelty. Proactive interference was modestly stronger when a smaller number of stimuli were used throughout the experiment, but proactive interference was minimally affected by the inter-trial interval. These findings are problematic for temporal models of forgetting, but Experiment 3 showed that proactive interference also resisted disruption produced by a secondary task presented within the inter-trial interval. Proactive interference was constantly present and generally resilient to the different manipulations. The combined data suggest a relatively durable, passive representation that can disrupt current working memory under a variety of different circumstances. (shrink)

Dartnall claims that visual short-term memory stores nonconceptual content , in the form of compressed images. In this paper I argue against the claim that NCC can be stored in VSTM. I offer four reasons why NCC cannot be stored in visual memory and why only conceptual information can: NCC lasts for a very short time and does not reach either visual short-term memory or visual long-term memory; the content of visual (...) states is stored in memory only if and when object-centered attention modulates visual processing and this modulation signifies the onset of the conceptualization of that content; only categorical high-level information that characterizes conceptual content and not metric and precise iconic information that characterizes NCC can be stored in visual memory for long periods; and if NCC were stored in visual memory then this would allow recognitional judgments pertaining to NCC—one could recognize the precise shade of a color that one had seen before. However NCC does not allow such recognitional judgments. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBoth auditory and visual emotional memories can be made less emotional by loading working memory during memory recall. Taxing WM during recall can be modality specific (giving an audit...

German and English speakers employ different strategies to encode static spatial scenes involving the axial position (standing vs. lying) of an inanimate figure object with respect to a ground object. In a series of three experiments, we show that this linguistic difference is not reflected in native speakers’ ability to detect changes in axial position in nonlinguistic memory tasks. Furthermore, even when participants are required to use language to encode a spatial scene, they do not rely on language during (...) a recognition memory task. These results have implications for the relationship between language and visual memory. (shrink)

This study investigated the characteristics of neural oscillation and functional connectivity in college students engaging in binge drinking using resting-state electroencephalography. Also, the associations of visual memory, evaluated by the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test, and neural oscillation with FC during the resting state were investigated. The BD and non-BD groups were selected based on scores of the Korean version of the Alcohol use disorders Identification Test and the Alcohol Use Questionnaire. EEG was performed for 6 min while the (...) participants rested with eyes closed. The theta, lower-alpha, and upper alpha powers did not differ between the BD and non-BD groups. Concerning FC, the BD group exhibited stronger theta coherence than that of the non-BD group, and in the lower and upper alpha bands, the BD group showed stronger coherence in some areas but weaker coherence in others compared with the non-BD group. However, these significant results were not observed after Bonferroni correction. The BD group showed significantly lower delayed recall scores on the RCFT than did the non-BD group. A positive correlation between the left prefrontal-parietal-occipital midline connection and performance on the delayed recall of the RCFT was observed in the BD group. The present results could suggest that binge drinkers have alterations in brain FC, which may be related to their visual memory deficits. (shrink)

The human sentence processor is able to make rapid predictions about upcoming linguistic input. For example, upon hearing the verb eat, anticipatory eye-movements are launched toward edible objects in a visual scene. However, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie anticipation remain to be elucidated in ecologically valid contexts. Previous research has, in fact, mainly used clip-art scenes and object arrays, raising the possibility that anticipatory eye-movements are limited to displays containing a small number of objects in a visually impoverished context. (...) In Experiment 1, we confirm that anticipation effects occur in real-world scenes and investigate the mechanisms that underlie such anticipation. In particular, we demonstrate that real-world scenes provide contextual information that anticipation can draw on: When the target object is not present in the scene, participants infer and fixate regions that are contextually appropriate. Experiment 2 investigates whether such contextual inference requires the co-presence of the scene, or whether memory representations can be utilized instead. The same real-world scenes as in Experiment 1 are presented to participants, but the scene disappears before the sentence is heard. We find that anticipation occurs even when the screen is blank, including when contextual inference is required. We conclude that anticipatory language processing is able to draw upon global scene representations to make contextual inferences. These findings are compatible with theories assuming contextual guidance, but posit a challenge for theories assuming object-based visual indices. (shrink)

Visual working memory is a construct hypothesized to store a small amount of accurate perceptual information that can be brought to bear on a task. Much research concerns the construct's capacity and the precision of the information stored. Two prominent theories of VWM representation have emerged: slot-based and continuous-resource mechanisms. Prior modeling work suggests that a continuous resource that varies over trials with variable capacity and a potential to make localization errors best accounts for the empirical data. Questions (...) remain regarding the variability in VWM capacity and precision. Using a novel eye-tracking paradigm, we demonstrate that VWM facilitates search and exhibits effects of fixation frequency and recency, particularly for prior targets. Whereas slot-based memory models cannot account for the human data, a novel continuous-resource model does capture the behavioral and eye tracking data, and identifies the relevant resource as item activation. (shrink)

People unfamiliar with Chinese characters show poorer visual working memory (VWM) performance for Chinese characters than do literates in Chinese. In a series of experiments, we investigated the reasons for this expertise advantage. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the advantage of Chinese literates does not transfer to novel material. Experts had similar resolution as novices for material outside of their field of expertise, and the memory of novices and experts did not differ when detecting a big (...) change, e.g., when a character’s color was changed. Memorizing appears to function as a rather abstract representation of word forms because memory for characters’ fonts was poor independently of expertise (Experiment 3), though still visual. Distractors that were highly similar conceptually did not increase memory errors, but visually similar distractors impaired memory (Experiment 4). We hypothesized that literates in Chinese represent characters in VWM as tokens of visual word forms made available by long-term memory. In Experiment 5, we provided novices with visual word form knowledge. Participants subsequently performed a change detection task with trained and novel characters in a functional magnetic resonance experiment. We analyzed set size- and training-dependent effects in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the visual word form area. VWM for trained characters was better than for novel characters. Neural activity increased with set size and at a slower rate for trained than for novel characters. All conditions approached the same maximum, but novel characters reached the maximum at a smaller set size than trained characters. The time course of the bold response depended on set size and knowledge status. Starting from the same initial maximum, neural activity at small set sizes returned to baseline more quickly for trained characters than for novel characters. Additionally, high performers showed generally more neural activity in the IPS than low performers. We conclude that experts’ better performance in working memory (WM) is caused by the availability of visual long-term representations (word form types) that allow a sparse representation of the perceived stimuli and make even small changes big because they cause a type change that is easily detected. (shrink)

This study aimed to explore the influence of the visuospatial active working memory sub-components on early math skills in young children, followed longitudinally along the first two years of primary school. We administered tests investigating visual active working memory (jigsaw puzzle), spatial active working memory (backward Corsi), and math tasks to 43 children at the beginning of first grade (T1), at the end of first grade (T2), and at the end of second grade (T3). Math tasks (...) were select according to the children’s age and their levels of formal education: the “Battery for the evaluation of numerical intelligence from 4 to 6 years of age” (BIN 4–6) at T1 to test early numerical competence and the “Test for the evaluation of calculating and problem-solving abilities” (AC-MT 6–11) to test math skills at T2 and T3. Three regression models, in which the predictors were identified through a forward selection based on the use of the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) index, were performed to study the relationship between visual and spatial working memory and math ability at the three points in time. The results show that spatial working memory influences early numerical performance at T1, while early numerical performance is the unique predic-tor of math performance at T2. At the end of the second grade, the regression model reveals a relationship between math performance and both visual and spatial working memory and the attenuation of the importance of domain-specific predictors. The study depicts the dif-ferent implications of visual and spatial working memory predictors over the children’s de-velopment periods and brings additional evidence to the debate on the relationship between visuospatial working memory and math ability in young children. (shrink)

Cowan defines a chunk as “a collection of concepts that have strong associations to one another and much weaker associations to other chunks currently in use.” This definition does not impose any constraints on the nature and number of elements that can be bound into a chunk. We present an experiment to demonstrate that such limitations exist for visual short-term memory, and that their analysis may lead to important insights into properties of visual memory.

Visual perspective during autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval influences how people remember the emotional aspects of memories. Prior research in emotion regulation has also shown that shifting from an own eyes to an observer-like perspective is an efficient way of regulating the affect elicited by emotional AMs. However, the impact of shifting visual perspective is also dependent on the nature of the emotion associated with the event. The current review synthesizes behavioral and functional neuroimaging findings from the event (...) memory and emotion regulation literature that examine how adopting particular visual perspectives and actively shifting across them during retrieval alters emotional experience, by primarily focusing on emotional intensity. We review current theories explaining why shifts in perspectives may or may not change the emotional characteristics of memories, then propose a new theory, suggesting that the own eyes and observer-like perspectives are two different retrieval orientations supported by differential neural activations that lead episodic details to be reconstructed in specific ways. (shrink)

Current theories propose that our sense of curiosity is determined by the learning progress or information gain that our cognitive system expects to make. However, few studies have explicitly tried to quantify subjective information gain and link it to measures of curiosity. Here, we asked people to report their curiosity about the intrinsically engaging perceptual ‘puzzles’ known as Mooney images, and to report on the strength of their aha experience upon revealing the solution image (curiosity relief). We also asked our (...) participants (279) to make a guess concerning the solution of the image, and used the distribution of these guesses to compute the crowdsourced semantic entropy (or ambiguity) of the images, as a measure of the potential for information gain. Our results confirm that curiosity and, even more so, aha experience is substantially associated with this semantic information gain measure. These findings support the expected information gain theory of curiosity and suggest that the aha experience or intrinsic reward is driven by the actual information gain. In an unannounced memory part, we also established that the often reported influence of curiosity on memory is fully mediated by the aha experience or curiosity relief. We discuss the implications of our results for the burgeoning fields of curiosity and psychoaesthetics. (shrink)