scholarly journals Estimating the quantity and quality of working memory representations with continuous report versus change detection

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 345-345
Author(s):  
E. Ayeroff ◽  
J. Gill ◽  
G. Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Change Detection ◽  
Memory Representations

scholarly journals Goal-directed and stimulus-driven selection of internal representations

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (39) ◽  
pp. 24590-24598
Author(s):  
Freek van Ede ◽  
Alexander G. Board ◽  
Anna C. Nobre
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Feature Matching ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Internal Representations ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
External Stimuli ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Do So

Adaptive behavior relies on the selection of relevant sensory information from both the external environment and internal memory representations. In understanding external selection, a classic distinction is made between voluntary (goal-directed) and involuntary (stimulus-driven) guidance of attention. We have developed a task—the anti-retrocue task—to separate and examine voluntary and involuntary guidance of attention to internal representations in visual working memory. We show that both voluntary and involuntary factors influence memory performance but do so in distinct ways. Moreover, by tracking gaze biases linked to attentional focusing in memory, we provide direct evidence for an involuntary “retro-capture” effect whereby external stimuli involuntarily trigger the selection of feature-matching internal representations. We show that stimulus-driven and goal-directed influences compete for selection in memory, and that the balance of this competition—as reflected in oculomotor signatures of internal attention—predicts the quality of ensuing memory-guided behavior. Thus, goal-directed and stimulus-driven factors together determine the fate not only of perception, but also of internal representations in working memory.

scholarly journals Bias in confidence: A critical test for discrete-state models of change detection

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kellen ◽  
Samuel Winiger ◽  
Henrik Singmann
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Change Detection ◽  
High Fidelity ◽  
Critical Test ◽  
Discrete State ◽  
The Core ◽  
Confidence Judgments ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
State Models ◽  
Biased Judgments

Ongoing discussions on the nature of storage in visual working memory have mostlyfocused on two theoretical accounts: On one hand we have a discrete-state accountpostulating that information in working memory is supported with high fidelity for alimited number of discrete items by a given number of “slots”, with no informationbeing retained beyond these. In contrast with this all-or-nothing view, we have acontinuous account arguing that information can be degraded in a continuous manner, reflecting the amount of resources dedicated to each item. It turns out that the core tenets of this discrete-state account constrain the way individuals can express confidence in their judgments, excluding the possibility of biased confidence judgments. Importantly, these biased judgments are expected when assuming a continuous degradation of information. We report two studies showing that biased confidence judgments can be reliably observed, a finding that rejects a large number of discrete-state models, dismissing the idea that change-detection judgments consist of a mixture of guesses and high-fidelity memory representations.

scholarly journals Lateralized alpha oscillations are irrelevant for the behavioral retro-cueing benefit in visual working memory

PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e9398
Author(s):  
Wanja A. Mössing ◽  
Niko A. Busch
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Alpha Power ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Alpha Band ◽  
Limited Capacity ◽  
Irrelevant Distractors ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
Precise Role

The limited capacity of visual working memory (vWM) necessitates the efficient allocation of available resources by prioritizing relevant over irrelevant items. Retro-cues, which inform about the future relevance of items after encoding has already finished, can improve the quality of memory representations of the relevant items. A candidate mechanism of this retro-cueing benefit is lateralization of neural oscillations in the alpha-band, but its precise role is still debated. The relative decrease of alpha power contralateral to the relevant items has been interpreted as supporting inhibition of irrelevant distractors or as supporting maintenance of relevant items. Here, we aimed at resolving this debate by testing how the magnitude of alpha-band lateralization affects behavioral performance: does stronger lateralization improve the precision of the relevant memory or does it reduce the biasing influence of the irrelevant distractor? We found that it does neither: while the data showed a clear retro-cue benefit and a biasing influence of non-target items as well as clear cue-induced alpha-band lateralization, the magnitude of this lateralization was not correlated with any performance parameter. This finding may indicate that alpha-band lateralization, which is typically observed in response to mnemonic cues, indicates an automatic shift of attention that only coincides with, but is not directly involved in mnemonic prioritization.

Cingulate oscillatory activity reflects the quality of memory representations in visuospatial working memory

Memory ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (9) ◽  
pp. 1173-1180
Author(s):  
Suriya Prakash Muthukrishnan ◽  
Sunaina Soni ◽  
Ratna Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Oscillatory Activity ◽  
Visuospatial Working Memory ◽  
Memory Representations

scholarly journals Modulation of Visual Working Memory Performance via Different Theta Frequency Stimulations

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1358
Author(s):  
Xue Guo ◽  
Ziyuan Li ◽  
Liangyou Zhang ◽  
Qiang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Performance Enhancement ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
The Right ◽  
Memory Resources

Previous studies have found that transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) can significantly enhance individuals’ working memory performance. However, it is still unclear whether the memory performance enhancement was attributed to the quantity or the quality of working memory. The current study applies tACS over the right parietal cortex at slower (4 Hz) and faster (7 Hz) frequencies to participants with high and low working memory capacities in a color recall memory task. This enabled us to explore the tACS effects on the quantity and quality of the working memory for individuals with different memory capacities. The results revealed that slower frequency (4 Hz) tACS enhanced the quality of memory representations, and faster frequency (7 Hz) tACS principally impaired the quantity of working memory. The underlying mechanism of this effect might be that tACS at different frequencies modulate the memory resources, which then selectively affect the quantity and quality of memory representations. Importantly, individual traits, as well as memory strategies, may be crucial factors to consider when testing the effect of tACS on working memory performance.

scholarly journals Lateralized alpha oscillations are irrelevant for the behavioral retro-cueing benefit in visual working memory

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wanja Alexander Mössing ◽  
Niko Busch
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Alpha Power ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Alpha Band ◽  
Limited Capacity ◽  
Irrelevant Distractors ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
Precise Role

The limited capacity of visual working memory (vWM) necessitates the efficient allocation of available resources by prioritizing relevant over irrelevant items. Retro-cues, which inform about the future relevance of items after encoding has already finished, can improve the quality of memory representations of the relevant items. A candidate mechanism of this retro-cueing benefit is lateralization of neural oscillations in the alpha-band, but its precise role is still debated. The relative decrease of alpha power contralateral to the relevant items has been interpreted as supporting inhibition of irrelevant distractors or as supporting maintenance of relevant items. Here, we aimed at resolving this debate by testing how the magnitude of alpha-band lateralization affects behavioral performance: does stronger lateralization improve the precision of the relevant memory or does it reduce the biasing influence of the irrelevant distractor? We found that it does neither: while the data showed a clear retro-cue benefit and a biasing influence of non-target items as well as clear cue-induced alpha-band lateralization, the magnitude of this lateralization was not correlated with any performance parameter. This finding may indicate that alpha-band lateralization, which is typically observed in response to mnemonic cues, indicates an automatic shift of attention that only coincides with, but is not directly involved in mnemonic prioritization.

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