기억 항목 간 상이하거나 동일한 세부특징에 대한 저장 요구가 시각작업기억 수행에 미치는 영향

초록

The present study examined Visual Working Memroy (VWM) storage efficiency when items with different features are displayed across different positions. In separate-memory condition of Experiment 1, either colored boxes or orientation bars were displayed respectively on either side of the visual fields as memory items whereas the items were all colored boxes or orientations bar in a control condition. Subjects were asked to remember the features of the memory items followed by a brief memory delay. After the delay, test items were displayed and subjects reported presence or absence of a change in either color or orientation across the memory and test items. The results showed that change detection performance was significantly higher in the separate memory condition than the control condition. Also, the difference became more apparent if the set size became larger. In Experiment 2, the items in separate-memory condition were replaced with colored orientation bars (i.e., conjunction items). The change in the test items could occur in either color or orientation dimension, but the side of visual fields for its occurrence was designated exclusively for each features (e.g., left for color vs. right for orientation). In the control condition (i.e., integrate-memory condition), no such constraint was present and either color or orientation change could occur randomly across the sides of visual fields. The results showed that the difference in change detection performance between separate-memory and the control conditions was greatly reduced, and no differential effect of the setsize manipulation was observed across each condition. These results support the weak-object hypothesis where items in VWM are represented flexibly either as a form of well-bound features or of independently-stored discrete features. rather than the strict models according to integrated-object or parallel-independent storage hypothesis.

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