Learning , Memory , and Cognition The Role of Attention in Item-Item Binding in Visual Working Memory (original) (raw)
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Is the binding of visual features in working memory resource-demanding?
Journal of experimental psychology. General, 2006
The episodic buffer component of working memory is assumed to play a role in the binding of features into chunks. A series of experiments compared memory for arrays of colors or shapes with memory for bound combinations of these features. Demanding concurrent verbal tasks were used to investigate the role of general attentional processes, producing load effects that were no greater on memory for feature combinations than for the features themselves. However, the binding condition was significantly less accurate with sequential rather than simultaneous presentation, especially for items earlier in the sequence. The findings are interpreted as evidence of a relatively automatic but fragile visual feature binding mechanism in working memory. Implications for the concept of an episodic buffer are discussed.
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.
Feature binding and attention in working memory: A resolution of previous contradictory findings
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.
Evidence for two attentional components in visual working memory
How does executive attentional control contribute to memory for sequences of visual objects, and what does this reveal about storage and processing in working memory? Three experiments examined the impact of a concurrent executive load (backward counting) on memory for sequences of individually presented visual objects. Experiments 1 and 2 found disruptive concurrent load effects of equivalent magnitude on memory for shapes, colors, and colored shape conjunctions (as measured by single-probe recognition). Crucially, these effects were only present for items 1 and 2 in a 3-item sequence; the final item was always impervious to this disruption. This pattern of findings was precisely replicated in Experiment 3 using a cued verbal recall measure of shape-color binding, with error analysis providing additional insights concerning attention-related loss of early-sequence items. These findings indicate an important role for executive processes in maintaining representations of earlier encountered stimuli in an active form alongside privileged storage of the most recent stimulus.
The Role of Aging in Intra-Item and Item-Context Binding Processes in Visual Working Memory
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2016
Aging is accompanied by declines in both working memory and long-term episodic memory processes. Specifically, important age-related memory deficits are characterized by performance impairments exhibited by older relative to younger adults when binding distinct components into a single integrated representation, despite relatively intact memory for the individual components. While robust patterns of age-related binding deficits are prevalent in studies of long-term episodic memory, observations of such deficits in visual working memory (VWM) may depend on the specific type of binding process being examined. For instance, a number of studies indicate that processes involved in item-context binding of items to occupied spatial locations within visual working memory are impaired in older relative to younger adults. Other findings suggest that intra-item binding of visual surface features (e.g., color, shape), compared to memory for single features, within visual working memory, remains relatively intact. Here, we examined each of these binding processes in younger and older adults under both optimal conditions (i.e., no concurrent load) and concurrent load (e.g., articulatory suppression, backward counting). Experiment 1 revealed an age-related intra-item binding deficit for surface features under no concurrent load but not when articulatory suppression was required. In contrast, in Experiments 2 and 3, we observed an age-related item-context binding deficit regardless of the level of concurrent load. These findings reveal that the influence of concurrent load on distinct binding processes within VWM, potentially those supported by rehearsal, is an important factor mediating the presence or absence of age-related binding deficits within VWM.
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics
We review our research on the episodic buffer in the multicomponent model of working memory (Baddeley, 2000), making explicit the influence of Anne Treisman's work on the way our research has developed. The crucial linking theme concerns binding, whereby the individual features of an episode are combined as integrated representations. We summarize a series of experiments on visual working memory that investigated the retention of feature bindings and individual features. The effects of cognitive load, perceptual distraction, prioritization, serial position, and their interactions form a coherent pattern. We interpret our findings as demonstrating contrasting roles of externally driven and internally driven attentional processes, as well as a distinction between visual buffer storage and the focus of attention. Our account has strong links with Treisman's concept of focused attention and aligns with a number of contemporary approaches to visual working memory.
Disruption of visual feature binding in working memory
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.
Feature Binding of Sequentially Presented Stimuli 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.