Visual similarity effects on short-term memory for order: The case of verbally labeled pictorial stimuli (original) (raw)
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Representation of order information: An analysis of grouping effects in short-term memory.
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1986
Presenting short sequences of items in temporal or spatial groups is known to improve recall of their order. Theories about this effect propose either that groups of items are represented in a hierarchical structure in which the positions of items in a group are nested under codes denoting the groups themselves, or in a matrix structure where each item is directly tagged for its group and position. In a matrix system, position codes are independent of group codes, and the retrieval of a code near the bottom of a hierarchy depends on the successful retrieval of the codes above it. Experiments 1-4 tested these dependence relationships with a probed recall procedure in which subjects were presented with a grouped sequence of items and were then required to recall the position and group of one of the items. This technique provided information about how well subjects correctly recalled both the group and position, the group only, the position only, and neither the group nor the position of an item. When the items in a group were letters, digits, or musical notes, the data conformed to a hierarchical structure. When the nonalphanumeric characters ~, $, %, & , . , +, @, T, <, were used, a matrix structure emerged.
Visual similarity in short-term recall for where and when
Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), 2008
Two experiments examined the effects of visual similarity on short-term recall for where and when in the visual spatial domain. A series of squares of similar or dissimilar colours were serially presented at various locations on the screen. At recall, all coloured squares were simultaneously presented in a random order at the bottom of the screen, and the locations used for presentation were indicated by white squares. Participants were asked to place the colours at their appropriate location in their presentation order. Performance for location (where) and order (when) was assessed separately. Results revealed that similarity severely hinders both memory for what was where and memory for what was when, under quiet and articulatory suppression conditions. These results provide further evidence that similarity has a major impact on processing relational information in memory.
Repetition and laterality effects on recognition memory for words and pictures*
Memory & Cognition, 1973
Recognition memory for a list of words was tested by presenting a series of items with Ss instructed to make positive responses to targets (list items) and negative responses to distractors (nonlist items). The test items were either words or pictures. and they were presented tachistoscopically either to the left or right visual field. The results showed mean response latencies to be generally faster for stimuli presented to the right visual field. Response times were faster for target and distractor stimuli on their second test presentations than on initial tests. but this effect was much larger for targets. Repetitions were shown to decrease the amount of time necessary to execute the stimulus encoding and initial retrieval stages of recognition. This was also true. although to a lesser extent. if different stimulus forms (words or pictures) were used on the two tests. Subsequent recognition stages, including memory search and decision processes. were apparently independent of test stimulus form.
Attention and the order of items in short-term visual memory
Psychological Research, 1986
ABSTRACT Subjects first detected a target presented at the left of fixation, and then attempted to report, in order, the first four items (numerals or shapes) in a stream of items presented to the right of fixation. At comparably difficult presentation rates, 10/s for numerals and 5/s for shapes, reports showed a mixture of correctly ordered items with items reported in a direction opposite to their order of presentation. Reports fit a three-parameter attention-gating model (AGM), which assumes that (1) after target detection, an attention gate opens briefly to allow items to enter visual short-term memory (VSTM), and (2) report order is determined by the attention each item receives in VSTM. Items presented either early or late in the stream tend to receive less attention and are thus reported as later than more central items. The fit to the AGM for both numerals and unlabelled shapes provides evidence that reports reflect order in short-term visual (rather than verbal) memory.
Visual similarity at encoding and retrieval in an item recognition task
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62(7), 1277-1284., 2009
The aim of this experiment was to examine the effects of shape similarity in visual working memory using a six alternative recognition task of Chinese characters. Shape similarity among items was manipulated at both encoding and retrieval in order to assess in which phase similarity impairs recognition to a greater degree. Results revealed that performance is particularly facilitated by high discriminability at retrieval but also by the presence of similar items at encoding, as similarity simplifies the global representation of the display and reduces memory load. Moreover, results provide further evidence that the classical similarity effect can be reversed in the visual domain when item memory (as opposed to order) is assessed.
The effects of familiarity and practice on naming pictures of objects
Memory & Cognition, 1973
Ss were given a paired-associate learning task, using nonsense shapes as stimuli and object names which varied in Thorndike-Lorge frequency as responses. Between each block of learning trials, Ss named the nonsense shapes and a set of line drawings of objects. While naming latencies for the shapes were unaffected by name frequency, there was an effect of frequency on naming a control set of pictures of objects. The frequency effect for the pictures decreased significantly with practice. When the Ss were asked to name pictures of the objects having the names previously learned for the nonsense shapes, an effect of frequency appeared, the size of the effect being the same as that found for the control pictures after practice. The frequency effect disappeared when the shapes were reintroduced.
A serial reproduction of order with distractors task was developed to make it possible to observe successive snapshots of the learning process at each serial position. The new task was used to explore the effect of several variables on serial memory performance: stimulus content (words, blanks, and pictures), presentation condition (spatial information vs. none), semantically categorized item clustering (grouped vs. ungrouped), and number of distractors relative to targets (none, equal, double). These encoding and retrieval variables, along with learning attempt number, affected both overall performance levels and the shape of the serial position function, although a large and extensive primacy advantage and a small 1-item recency advantage were found in each case. These results were explained well by a version of the scale-independent memory, perception, and learning model that accounted for improved performance by increasing the value of only a single parameter that reflects reduced interference from distant items.
The influence of similarity on visual working memory representations
Visual Cognition, 2009
In verbal memory, similarity between items in memory often leads to interference and impaired memory performance. The present study sought to determine whether analogous interference effects would be observed in visual working memory by varying the similarity of the to-be-remembered objects in a color change-detection task. Instead of leading to interference and impaired performance, increased similarity among the items being held in memory led to improved performance. Moreover, when two similar colors were presented along with one dissimilar color, memory performance was better for the similar colors than for the dissimilar color. Similarity produced better performance even when the objects were presented sequentially and even when memory for the first item in the sequence was tested. These findings show that similarity does not lead to interference between representations in visual working memory. Instead, similarity may lead to improved task performance, possibly due to increased stability or precision of the memory representations during maintenance. Decades of research shows that similarity between representations in memory typically leads to impaired memory performance. In the domain of verbal working memory, lists of phonetically similar words (e.g., "cad, map, man, cap, mad") are usually more difficult to remember than lists of phonetically dissimilar words (e.g., "pit, day, pen, bar, few"-see Conrad, 1964). In the domain of episodic long-term memory, similar representations may lead to false memories by priming other related representations, as in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In addition, proactive interference can impair memory performance when materials from the same set are repeated over trials (Keppel & Underwood, 1962). Thus, similarity often engenders poorer memory performance, and it does not usually lead to better performance unless it can somehow be used as a retrieval cue (e.g., knowing that all the words in a list rhyme-see Gupta, Lipinski, & Aktunc, in press). In the context of visual working memory 1 , similarity between representations might be expected to impair performance if the representations are competing for access to a limited supply of some representational medium (see, e.g., Alvarez & Cavanagh, 2004). For example, if a limited pool of color-selective units is used to store colors in working memory, and two slightly different shades of red are being stored, these two representations may compete for access to the set of units, reducing the number of units available for each representation. Similarly, if the representations of the two shades of red are not well isolated from each other,
Serial position effects in short-term visual memory: A SIMPLE explanation?
Memory & Cognition, 2007
A version of short-term visual memory recognition paradigm with pictures of unfamiliar faces as stimuli was used in three experiments to assess the applicability of the distinctiveness-based SIMPLE model proposed by . Initial simulations indicated that the amount of recency predicted increased as the parameter measuring the psychological distinctiveness of the stimulus material (c) increased and that the amount of primacy was dependent on the extent of proactive interference from previously presented stimuli. The data from Experiment 1, in which memory lists of four and five faces varying in visual similarity were used, confirmed the predicted extended recency effect. However, changes in visual similarity were not found to produce changes in c. In Experiments 2 and 3, the conditions that influence the magnitude of c were explored. These revealed that both the familiarity of the stimulus class before testing and changes in familiarity, due to perceptual learning, influenced distinctiveness, as indexed by the parameter c. Overall, the empirical data from all three experiments were well fit by SIMPLE.
Coding of serial order in verbal, visual and spatial working memory
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2017
In the domain of working memory, recent theories postulate that the maintenance of serial order is driven by position marking. According to this idea, serial order is maintained though associations of each item with an independent representation of the position that the item constitutes in the sequence. Recent studies suggest that those position markers are spatial in nature, with the beginning items associated with left side and the end elements with the right side of space (i.e., the ordinal position effect). So far however, it is unclear whether serial order is coded along the same principles in the verbal and the visuospatial domain. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether serial order is coded in a domain general fashion or not. To unravel this question, 6 experiments were conducted. The first 3 experiments revealed that the ordinal position effect is found with verbal but not with spatial information. In the subsequent experiments, the authors isolated the origin of this dissociation and conclude that to obtain spatial coding of serial order, it is not the nature of the encoded information (verbal, visual, or spatial) that is crucial, but whether the memoranda are semantically processed or not. This work supports the idea that serial order is coded in a domain general fashion, but suggests that position markers are only spatially coded when the to-be-remembered information is processed at the semantic level.