Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2023-11-06
Abstract： Visual working memory (VWM) plays a foundational role in advanced cognitive functions. The state-based models propose a hierarchical organization of functional states, where memory representations with high attentional priority are retained in an online state (i.e., active state), while those with lower priority are kept in an offline state (i.e., passive state) for later use. The memory representations can be dynamically transferred between the two states according to the task demands. However, there was rare work to explore how the memory representations transitioned into the offline state from the online, generating the offline representations. Here, we put forward two hypothesis, the consolidation hypothesis and the fade-away hypothesis.
To explore this question, participants were instructed to remember two sequential memory arrays, with Memory array 2 being detected before Memory array 1. In this memory task, Memory array 1 was held in the offline state during the active maintenance of Memory array 2. Colored squares served as memory stimuli. 30 healthy college students participated in each experiment. We primarily modulated the temporal context related to the state transformation of memory representations: the interval delay between the two memory arrays in Experiment 1 and the presentation time of Memory array 2 in Experiment 2. The load of online memory varied between two and four in each trial. These variables were within-subject factors. Experiment 1 aimed to verify that the shortage of interval delay between memory arrays led to the failure of state transformation in the condition of 0.8s-interval. Experiment 2 attempted to determine which hypothesis, consolidation or fade-away, aligned better with the state transformation process.
The exploration of representational state transformation was built on the resources-dissociation account, which proposed that the offline representations are independent of the active processing of online representations. Memory arrays 1 and 2 were used to test the offline and online memory, respectively. The results of Experiment 1 showed that variations in online load did not affect offline memory when extending the interval delay from 0.8s to 1s. This indicated that the state transformation of Memory array 1 continued beyond 0.8s after its disappearance and could complete within a 1s-interval. In Experiment 2, the interval was designed at 0.8s. We observed that the online load variation had no impact on offline memory when extending the presentation time of Memory array 2 from 0.2s to 0.5s. This supported the consolidation hypothesis, indicating that the sufficient presentation time of Memory array 2 allowed for the state transformation of Memory array 1 to complete before the subsequent processing of Memory array 2. Thus, we concluded that the state transformation involved a consolidation processing to transfer the online representations to the offline state, rather than natural fade-away of persistent neural activity.
In summary, the state transformation acts as a process of consolidating online memory representations into the offline state, thereby forming offline representations. This process can be completed within a sufficiently long retention interval, or continue during the presentation of subsequent stimuli when providing a deficient interval. The current findings provide fresh insights into the mechanisms of representational maintenance in the two distinct states.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Attentional selection does not only exist in the visual processing, but also points to a number of short-stored memory representations. At the behavioral level, both types of attentional mechanisms exert a facilitatory effect on the task performance. Besides, this facilitatory effect is stable across different patterns of attentional distribution. At the neural level, on the one hand, due to the fact that the encoding and short-term storage of the visual information are mainly processed in the occipital region (V1~V4) topologically related to retina, these regions can thus serve as a valid platform for the operation of the two types of attentional selection; on the other hand, the controlling signal from dorsal fronto-parietal network could modulate the selective attention processing in the visual cortex in a top-down manner, which consequently facilitates the priority of the target processing. These new evidence indicating that both types of attentional selection may arise from a unified control mechanism. At the same time, the neural frameworks described in this article also provide a new perspective for re-understanding of the relationship between attention and visual working memory.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： In the process of visual working memory, the maintenance and manipulation of the memory items require transforming a fleeting sensory input into a durable working memory representation, which is defined as the visual working memory consolidation. In light of the “gating” role of the consolidation, the researchers have developed a variety of research paradigms to explore the mechanisms that may be involved. However, the time course and the patterns of consolidation observed under different paradigms is quite different. Moreover, there are also different views on the theoretical and neural mechanism involved in consolidation. By comparing the differences among different paradigms and sorting out the views of various parties, the solutions to these problems can be effectively promoted. In addition to verifying the consolidation model in a variety of paradigms, future researches can also explore the role of attention in consolidation and how factors such as project familiarity affect consolidation processing.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Although visual working memory (VWM) has been studied for decades, the storage mechanism of VWM remains unclear. A strong object-based theory and a weak object-based theory have been proposed for the VWM storage mechanism. The arguments of these two theories focus on whether features from the same dimension can be integrated into the representation of objects stored in VWM. The strong object-based theory claimed that object was a unit of VWM, the capacity of which was not affected by the number of features. However, the recent studies have proved that weak object-based theory because the features from the same dimension (e.g., two colors) cannot be integrated simultaneously into the representation of objects in VWM, and the VWM capacity was constrained by the number of features. The aim of this paper is to explore whether features from the same dimension can be successfully integrated into a representation of objects stored in VWM. Based on the finding of previous study, we proposed that experimental paradigm and stimulus property might be the main factors that influence the integration of same-dimension information into a representation. Two experiments were conducted to test whether these two factors could affect the integration process respectively. Experiment 1 used a recall task to investigate whether experimental paradigm is a main factor to influence the integration of same-dimension features. The results show that, no matter which experimental paradigms, participants were unable to integrated the same-dimension features into a representation. These suggests that experimental paradigm is not a main factor for explaining the failure of the integration of same-dimension features into a representation stored in VWM. Experiment 2 was conducted to explore whether stimulus property could affect the integration of same-dimension features. Two types of stimulus were selected as experimental materials (e.g., meaningless and meaningful objects). We expected that, in meaningful object condition, participants would easily memorize two conjoint colors as one representation because of the integrated clues (the meaningful shapes); in contrast, participants were more likely to memorize the two features separately due to the absence of integrated clues. The results of Experiment 2 show that, the same-dimension features could not be integrated into one representation in both conditions (meaningful and meaningless objects). Thus, Experiment 2 suggests that the same-dimension features could not be integrated into a representation of objects stored in VWM, regardless of the integrated clues. The present study provides supporting evidences for the weak object-based theory by claiming that manipulation of variables such as experimental paradigm and stimulus property exerts no effect on the memorization of same- dimensional features.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： When the associations among objects in the scene tend to remain unchanged as the time progressed, the repeated associations would guide attention to the target’s location more efficiently compared with the new context that changed across blocks, which is known as the contextual cuing effect. Though the process of the spatial layout has been widely interpreted, some studies that has investigated the role of object’s identities in contextual cuing effect were limited to the Euclidean property. The topological property, one of the most important objects’ identities referring to visual perception, was largely neglected. In this study, we aimed to manipulate configurations with topological property, Euclidean property, combined property as well as random configurations to test whether the predictability of the target associated with the topological property has the superiority relative to the Euclidean property. In Experiment one, a classic contextual cuing task was performed. Four types of configurations were randomly presented in the experiment. Experiment two was divided into two sessions, the studying session and the testing session. In the studying session, 24 configurations were repeated throughout the entire session, which was used to develop the learning effect. In the testing session, the previous 24 configurations were transformed into three groups, the topological repeated configurations, the Euclidean repeated configurations and the combined configurations. Meanwhile, eight random configurations were introduced as the baseline to measure the contextual cuing effect. In Experiment three, after the regularities of contexts had been learned, the topological properties of the target (experiment 3a) or distractors (experiment 3b) had been changed respectively. We explore whether topological changed configurations could capture attention by generating “new object” or lift the bound between topological regularities of the context and corresponding spatial layouts. In Experiment one, the main effects and the interaction between configuration and epoch were significant, indicating that all the three different repeated configurations obtained a remarkable contextual cuing effect. Further analysis showed that the reaction time in topological repeated configuration was faster than that in the random configuration in the 1st epoch, while the Euclidean repeated configuration had faster RTs than the random configuration from the 2nd epoch. In Experiment two, only the main effect of epoch was significant for the studying session, revealing an obvious learning effect. After configurations transformed, compared to the matched configurations in the learning session, RTs in both the topological repeated configuration and the Euclidean repeated configuration were significantly increased. Furthermore, the RTs of the topological repeated configuration were faster than the random configuration, while the RTs of the Euclidean repeated configuration were slower than the random configuration. The results demonstrated that the object’s property played an important role in contextual cuing effect, and the stability of topological-target associations made a greater contribution than Euclidean-target associations did in maintaining the contextual cuing effect. In Experiment three, both sub-experiments showed a significant learning effect in the studying session. For the testing session of Experiment 3a, the reaction time was not affected when the topological property of the target has changed. However, the accuracy of the topological changed configuration was significantly decreased than the topological repeated configuration of the Experiment 3b. Thus, Experiment three clarified the increased reaction time in the Euclidean repeated configuration, suggesting that contextual regularities of topological properties were bound to corresponding spatial layout. When topological regularities distorted, the "contextual confusion" came forth and made participants unable to utilize the context to guide attention to the target location effectively. For the first time, we have verified that the associations between objects’ topological property and the target could produce behavioral benefit than the Euclidean associations do. The association could probably be regarded as an informative cue to guide attention to the target location more efficiently. Nevertheless, the predictability of topological configuration takes priorities over Euclidean configuration during the learning course, and the association between objects’ topological property and the target has a more important significance in maintaining the contextual cuing effect.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Visual working memory (VWM) consolidation refers to the process of transforming a fleeting sensory representation into a relatively durable VWM representation which could be maintained briefly. It plays an important role in the process of visual information. In recent years, researchers have begun to shift the research focus from the time course of consolidation process to the consolidation capacity. They have found that consolidation capacity not only depends on the number of items which could be consolidated at the same time, but could be also affected by the allocation of attention resources caused by spatial scale. However, the simultaneous-sequential paradigm used in previous studies might be interfered with by some extraneous variables, such as the location of stimulus presentation, resulting in the inconsistent results of VWM consolidation studies.In Experiment 1, two masked colored patches (targets) were briefly presented (either simultaneous or sequential) within a virtual large circle (10� to 15� but 50% at 8�) or a virtual small circle (5.2� to 7.9� but 50% at 8�), and each condition was presented in different blocks of trials. Following the targets, a blank screen preceded the onset of a colored probe. Participants were asked to memorize the targets frames and indicate by a button press whether the probe was the same as any one of the targets. The results show that no difference was found between sequential and simultaneous presentation conditions, while the performance for small circle presentation was better than that for large circle presentation. These results correspond with previous studies and suggest that the variation of attention scope has no impact on the consolidation capacity. In Experiment 2, a colored target was presented, follow by two masked colored patches. Participants needed to judge if the target matched any of the masked colored patches. The variation of presentation scope was identical to that of Experiment 1. The results show no significant difference between the large and small attention scope condition. These results show no evidence for the effect of attention scope on the perceptual process and suggest that attention resource allocation caused by attention scope could affect the probability of VWM consolidation, but it does not influence the consolidation capacity.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Retro-cue effect (RCE) refers to the phenomenon that individuals can use retro-cues to improve their visual working memory (VWM) performance of target items after the disappearance of memory targets. To explain the mechanism of RCE in VWM, five different hypotheses have been proposed by previous studies: the hypothesis of enhancing target representations, the hypothesis of forgetting non-target representations, the hypothesis of preventing memory degradation, the hypothesis of preventing interference from probe array and the hypothesis of cognitive phase separation. Although RCE has been repeatedly observed in previous studies, the mechanism of RCE remains unclear. In this study, we conducted three experiments to test these hypotheses.In Experiment 1, participants were asked to memorize four colors in a recall task. They needed to recall the color of the target item when the probe array presented. There are three experimental conditions, the normal cue condition, the short interval no-cue condition, and the long interval no-cue condition. In the normal cue condition, a memory array (four colored squares) presented for 200 ms. Then, the memory array disappeared for 450 ms and a retro-cue presented, followed by a 900 ms blank. Then the probe array presented. In the short interval no-cue condition and long interval no-cue condition, no retro-cue presented after the memory array, but the probe array would present after the memory array disappeared for 450 ms (short interval no-cue condition) or 1400 ms (long interval no-cue condition). The design and procedure of Experiment 2 were similar to those of Experiment 1, except we used a grey-wheel cue condition and a colored-wheel cue condition to replace the long interval no-cue condition. These two new conditions were similar to the normal cue condition, except the retro-cue would appear with a distractor of a gray wheel (grey-wheel cue condition) or with a distractor of a colored wheel (colored-wheel cue condition). The design and procedure of Experiment 3 were similar to those of Experiment 2, except a long-grey-wheel short-cue condition and a long-grey-wheel long-cue condition were used to replace the normal cue condition and colored cue condition. In the long-grey-wheel short-cue condition, the retro-cue presented for 100 ms, but the grey wheel presented for 1000 ms. In the long-grey-wheel long-cue condition, the retro-cue and grey wheel presented for 1000 ms.The results of Experiment 1 showed that there was no significant difference in memory performance between the short interval no-cue condition and long interval no-cue condition, while the performance of the normal cue condition was better than that of short and long interval no-cue conditions. The results of Experiment 2 showed that participants obtained the RCE under the normal cue, the grey-wheel cue, and the colored-wheel cue conditions. However, the degrees of RCE obtained by these three conditions were different (normal cue > grey-wheel cue > colored-wheel cue). The results of Experiment 3 showed that participants obtained the RCE under the grey-wheel cue condition, the long-grey-wheel short-cue condition, and long-grey-wheel long-cue condition. The degree of RCE obtained by these three conditions was the same. The results of the present study supported the hypothesis of cognitive phase separation, which suggested that the retro-cue can separate the internal attention reallocation process and decision-making process, avoiding cognitive interference from the probe display. In addition, when the retro-cue was accompanied by the distractors, the type of distractors (rather than the presentation time) affected the degree of RCE. This study provides further evidence for the hypothesis of cognitive phase separation, which is crucial to solve the debate on the mechanism of RCE and to understand the relationship between attention and VWM.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Studies on how long-term memory affects working memory (WM) have found that long-term memory can enhance WM processing. However, these studies only use item memory as the representation of long-term memory. In addition to item memory, associative memory is also an essential part of long-term memory. The associative memory and item memory involve different cognitive mechanisms and brain areas. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how associative memory affects WM processing. Before the WM task, participants were asked to store 16 pairs of dissimilar pictures into long-term memory. The participants would obtain the associative memory of these pairs of pictures in the long-term memory. The WM task was a change detection paradigm. Memory pictures in the memory array appeared in pairs (associative condition) or out of pairs (independent condition). In Experiment 1, the memory array with 6 items (3 pairs) was presented for 500 ms or 1000 ms. After a 1000 ms interval, participants needed to determine whether the probe item was the same as the memory array. The design and procedure of Experiment 2 were similar to those of Experiment 1, except that memory array was presented for only 500 ms, and 2 items (1 pairs) and 4 terms (2 pairs) were added in set size condition. Alpha power of electroencephalogram (EEG) was also collected and analyzed in Experiment 2. The results in Experiment 1 showed that WM capacity and accuracy were significantly lower in the associative condition than in the independent condition (for both presentation-time conditions: 500ms and 1000ms). The results in Experiment 2 showed that the alpha power in the independent condition increased as the memory set size increased (2 items < 4 items < 6 items), while the alpha power in the associative condition reached the asymptote when the set size was 4 (2 items < 4 items = 6 items). Both of these two experiments' results showed that WM capacity in the associative condition was lower than that in the independent condition. In conclusion, long-term associative representations inhibit the current WM processing and decrease WM capacity. This inhibitory effect is not affected by the length of encoding time. It implies that the reason for the increase of WM load by associative memory may come from the disorder of attention distribution.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Contextual cueing refers to the global properties of a context or scene used to search for specific objects and regions. Chun and Jiang (1998) found that in a visual search, the reaction time to repeated configurations was shorter than the reaction time to newly generated configurations. The benefit of repeated context-target association is widely known as the contextual-cueing effect, which indicates that the subject has learned the contextual association by which attention is guided to facilitate the searching. However, the learning of contextual cueing lacks adaptability. When the subject has learned a set of contexts, it is difficult to update a new target into existing contexts (re-learning) or to learn a new set of contexts (new-learning). Previous studies have shown that restarted learning processes can facilitate the learning of new context-target associations, while updating old contexts is associated with the scope of attention. Notably, positive emotions could broaden the scope of attention and break the cognitive fixation on old processes; therefore, it is possible to improve the adaptability of contextual-cueing learning via positive emotions. This study aimed to explore whether positive emotions could enhance the adaptability of contextual learning. To this end, we recruited a sample of 18 young adults with positive and neutral affective priming as experimental conditions and control conditions, respectively, which allowed us to explore the contextual-cueing effect under the conditions of re-learning and new-learning. It should be noted that contextual cueing was defined in operation as the reaction time to the newly generated configuration minus that to the repeated configuration. The experiment was divided into two phases: the learning phase and the switch phase. In the learning phase, the subjects learned a set of contextual cues. In the switch phase, with the contextual-cueing effect as the dependent variable, a repeated measures ANOVA was conducted with the emotional valence (positive versus neutral), the new contextual-cueing learning type (re-learning versus new-learning), and the time phase (early phase versus late phase). The results indicated that neutral emotions did not facilitate contextual-cueing learning irrespective of the new contextual-cueing learning type. However, positive emotion improved learning in the new-learning condition, in which the contextual-cueing effect was higher in positive emotions than in neutral emotions both in the late phase and the early phase, whereas the re-learning condition did not show any sign of a contextual- cueing effect above zero. This study indicates that positive emotions can improve the adaptability of contextual-cueing learning and that the underlying mechanism restarts learning processing, which fails to prevent an automatic retrieval of the old presentations caused by similarity. Therefore, it facilitates the learning of new contextual cueing but does not update learned contextual cueing.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Experimental Psychology submitted time 2022-06-07
Abstract：
Contextual cueing refers to the global properties of a context or scene used to search for specific objects and regions. Chun and Jiang (1998) found that in a visual search, the reaction time to repeated configurations was shorter than the reaction time to newly generated configurations. The benefit of repeated context–target association is widely known as the contextual-cueing effect, which indicates that the subject has learned the contextual association by which attention is guided to facilitate the searching. However, the learning of contextual cueing lacks adaptability. When the subject has learned a set of contexts, it is difficult to update a new target into existing contexts (re-learning) or to learn a new set of contexts (new-learning). Previous studies have shown that restarted learning processes can facilitate the learning of new context–target associations, while updating old contexts is associated with the scope of attention. Notably, positive emotions could broaden the scope of attention and break the cognitive fixation on old processes; therefore, it is possible to improve the adaptability of contextual-cueing learning via positive emotions.
This study aimed to explore whether positive emotions could enhance the adaptability of contextual learning. To this end, we recruited a sample of 18 young adults with positive and neutral affective priming as experimental conditions and control conditions, respectively, which allowed us to explore the contextual-cueing effect under the conditions of re-learning and new-learning. It should be noted that contextual cueing was defined in operation as the reaction time to the newly generated configuration minus that to the repeated configuration.
The experiment was divided into two phases: the learning phase and the switch phase. In the learning phase, the subjects learned a set of contextual cues. In the switch phase, with the contextual-cueing effect as the dependent variable, a repeated measures ANOVA was conducted with the emotional valence (positive versus neutral), the new contextual-cueing learning type (re-learning versus new-learning), and the time phase (early phase versus late phase).
The results indicated that neutral emotions did not facilitate contextual-cueing learning irrespective of the new contextual-cueing learning type. However, positive emotion improved learning in the new-learning condition, in which the contextual-cueing effect was higher in positive emotions than in neutral emotions both in the late phase and the early phase, whereas the re-learning condition did not show any sign of a contextual-cueing effect above zero.
This study indicates that positive emotions can improve the adaptability of contextual-cueing learning and that the underlying mechanism restarts learning processing, which fails to prevent an automatic retrieval of the old presentations caused by similarity. Therefore, it facilitates the learning of new contextual cueing but does not update learned contextual cueing.
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