The Importance of Being Relevant

Memory & Cognition, 2011

In a series of five experiments, we studied the effect of a visual suffix on the retention in short-term visual memory of both individual visual features and objects involving the binding of two features. Experiments 1A, 1B, and 2 involved suffixes consisting of features external to the to-be-remembered set and revealed a modest but equivalent disruption on individual and bound feature conditions. Experiments 3A and 3B involved suffixes comprising features that could potentially have formed part of the to-be-remembered set (but did not on that trial). Both experiments showed greater disruption of retention for objects comprising bound features than for their individual features. The results are interpreted as differentiating two components of suffix interference, one affecting memory for features and bindings equally, the other affecting memory for bindings. The general component is tentatively identified with the attentional cost of operating a filter to prevent the suffix from entering visual working memory, whereas the specific component is attributed to the particular fragility of bound representations when the filter fails.

2012

We aimed to resolve an apparent contradiction between previous experiments from different laboratories, using dual-task methodology to compare effects of a concurrent executive load on immediate recognition memory for colours or shapes of items or their colour-shape combinations. Results of two experiments confirmed previous evidence that an irrelevant attentional load interferes equally with memory for features and memory for feature bindings. Detailed analyses suggested that previous contradictory evidence arose from limitations in the way recognition memory was measured. The present findings are inconsistent with an earlier suggestion that feature binding takes place within a multi-modal episodic buffer (Baddeley, 2000) and support a subsequent account in which binding takes place automatically prior to information entering the episodic buffer (Baddeley et al., 2011). Methodologically, the results suggest that different measures of recognition memory performance (A′, d′, corrected recognition) give a converging picture of main effects, but are less consistent in detecting interactions. We suggest this limitation on the reliability of measuring recognition should be taken into account in future research so as to avoid problems of replication that turn out to be more apparent than real.

2010

features of an object are processed to a certain extent by different neurons within the visual system. For example, For purposes of this review, we will define the binding some neurons in areas V2 and V4 respond selectively problem as the problem of how the visual system corto the orientation of an object, independent of its color, rectly links up all the different features of complex obwhereas other V2 and V4 neurons respond selectively jects. For example, when viewing a person seated in a to color, independent of shape, and cells selective for blue car, one effortlessly sees that the person's nose different features are often located in separate regions belongs to his face and not to the car, and that the car, of both areas Schein et al., 1982; Livingstone and Hubel, but not the nose, is blue. To fully understand the solution 1983; Desimone et al., 1985; Tanaka et al., 1986b; Schein to this problem requires a good neurobiological theory and Desimone, 1990; Ghose and Ts'o, 1997). Still other of object recognition, which does not exist. We will neurons in the middle temporal area (MT) and the medial therefore follow the lead of the computer engineer, who, superior temporal area (MST) encode various aspects when asked to describe how he would write a computer of the motion of the stimulus (Desimone and Ungerleider, program to recognize a chicken, replied, "first, assume 1986; Saito et al., 1986; Tanaka et al., 1986a, 1989; Roda spherical chicken." Thus, in this review we will make man and Albright, 1989; Stoner and Albright, 1992; Geesome assumptions that simplify the binding problem in saman and Andersen, 1996; Treue and Andersen, 1996; order to appreciate how neural mechanisms of attention Bradley et al., 1998; Burač as et al., 1998; O'Keefe and provide a partial solution.

2003

Through the study of memory over a long period of time, we have come to organise the human memory into various categories, or "systems" . Two systems, which have been well studies are long-term memory (LTM) and working memory (WM). An essential component of long-term memory system is semantic memory which contains our model of the world. This is the knowledge that has been generalized over various situations that the human being has encountered during his lifespan. The working memory system, on the other hand, represents transitory informationmemory of the situation at hand -and therefore acts like a limited-capacity, temporary store for the visual and auditory information perceived by an individual .

Canadian journal of experimental psychology = Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 2014

This study examined the role of attention in maintaining information between visual features in visual working memory. In a change detection paradigm, two different memory conditions were created: one that required the maintenance of features and one that required the maintenance of how the features were bound together. During the short retention interval that separated the study display and test display, a tone discrimination task was to be performed. The attentional demand of the tone discrimination task was manipulated to test whether memory for binding was more disrupted than memory for features when the proportion of time during which attention is unavailable for maintenance is increased. We observed that memory for features and memory for bindings were equally disrupted by increasing the attentional demands of the tone discrimination task. This suggests that attention does not play a special role in the maintenance of feature bindings in visual working memory.

Frontiers in Psychology

Feature binding is a process that creates an integrated representation of an object. A change detection task with four stimuli is used to study color-shape binding of sequentially presented stimuli. Given the immense importance of locations in feature binding, and noting the confound of location information with simultaneous presentation, we compared simultaneous and sequential presentations when locations remained the same from study to test and when they changed randomly. In Experiment 1, sequential presentation implied showing the stimuli one by one to gradually build up the study display. There were no differences between the two modes of presentation in this experiment, although performance was better with unchanged locations than random locations. Experiment 2 used a sequential presentation when one stimulus vanished as the next was presented. An interaction effect showed that performance was much better with unchanged locations than random locations with simultaneous presentation, whereas locations had no effect in the sequential presentation condition. Three subsequent experiments, with drastically reduced presentation time for the display in the simultaneous presentation condition (Experiment 3), with blank intervals inserted after every stimulus in the sequential presentation condition (Experiment 4), and with a mask given immediately after the studydisplay presentation (Experiment 5), showed results similar to Experiment 2. Thus, we surmise that locations are a factor only in simultaneous presentation, and not in sequential presentation, and the differences between the two conditions can be attributed to post-perceptual factors within visual working memory.

An important yet unresolved question regarding visual working memory (VWM) relates to whether or not binding processes within VWM require additional attentional resources compared with processing solely the individual components comprising these bindings. Previous findings indicate that binding of surface features (e.g., colored shapes) within VWM is not demanding of resources beyond what is required for single features. However, it is possible that other types of binding, such as the binding of complex, distinct items (e.g., faces and scenes), in VWM may require additional resources. In 3 experiments, we examined VWM item-item binding performance under no load, articulatory suppression, and backward counting using a modified change detection task. Binding performance declined to a greater extent than single-item performance under higher compared with lower levels of concurrent load. The findings from each of these experiments indicate that processing item-item bindings within VWM requires a greater amount of attentional resources compared with single items. These findings also highlight an important distinction between the role of attention in item-item binding within VWM and previous studies of long-term memory (LTM) where declines in single-item and binding test performance are similar under divided attention. The current findings provide novel evidence that the specific type of binding is an important determining factor regarding whether or not VWM binding processes require attention.

Neuropsychologia, 2011

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics

Binding theories assume that features of stimuli and executed responses can be integrated together in one event file (Hommel, Visual Cognition, 5, 183–216, 1998; Hommel, Cognitive Sciences, 8, 494–500, 2004). Every reencounter with one or more of the stored features leads to an automatic retrieval of the previously constructed event file and hence of the response—even the repetition of a task-irrelevant distractor stimulus can retrieve a previously encoded response. This so-called distractor–response binding effect is typically investigated using a sequential prime-probe design that allows the orthogonal variation of response relation (response repetition vs. resporrevertnse change) and distractor relation (distractor repetition vs. distractor change), while probe response times and error rates are measured as dependent variable. Previous research has shown that task-relevant stimuli can be represented at different levels (e.g., perceptual and conceptual; see Henson et al., Trends i...