Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine whether the process of updating information in visual short-term memory (VSTM) is object based. We investigated whether modifying the memory of one feature of an object would automatically promote refreshing the memory of all of its other features. The results showed that the facilitative effect of updating was specific to the updated feature of an object and did not spread to its nonupdated features. This feature-selective effect suggests that updating VSTM is not object based (Experiment 1), even though storage was object based (Experiment 2). Control experiments ruled out strategy-based (Experiment 3) and stimulus-related (Experiments 4–6) accounts. Feature-selective updating may indicate that the mechanism used to modify the contents of memory may have a different basis than that used to encode or store information in memory.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alvarez, G. A., & Cavanagh, P. (2004). The capacity of visual shortterm memory is set both by visual information load and by number of objects. Psychological Science, 15, 106–111.
Avrahami, J. (1999). Objects of attention, objects of perception. Perception & Psychophysics, 61, 1604–1612.
Bao, M., Li, Z.-H., & Zhang, D.-R. (2007). Binding facilitates attention switching within working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 33, 959–969.
Brainerd, D. H. (1997). The psychophysics toolbox. Spatial Vision, 10, 433–436.
Chen, Z., & Cave, K. R. (2006). Reinstating object-based attention under positional certainty: The importance of subjective parsing. Perception & Psychophysics, 68, 992–1003.
CIE (1986). Colorimetry (2nd ed., Publication 15.2 [E-1.3.1]). Vienna: Central Bureau of the CIE.
Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 24, 87–114.
Downing, P. E. (2000). Interactions between visual working memory and selective attention. Psychological Science, 11, 467–473.
Duncan, J. (1984). Selective attention and the organization of visual information. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 501–517.
Egly, R., Driver, J., & Rafal, R. D. (1994). Shifting visual attention between objects and locations: Evidence from normal and parietal lesion subjects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123, 161–177.
Eng, H. Y., Chen, D., & Jiang, Y. (2005). Visual working memory for simple and complex visual stimuli. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 1127–1133.
Friedman, N. P., Miyake, A., Corley, R. P., Young, S. E., DeFries, J. C., & Hewitt, J. K. (2005). Not all executive functions are related to intelligence. Psychological Science, 17, 172–179.
Garavan, H. (1998). Serial attention within working memory. Memory & Cognition, 26, 263–276.
Gordon, R. D., & Irwin, D. E. (2000). The role of physical and concept tual properties in preserving object continuity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 26, 136–150.
Griffin, I. C., & Nobre, A. C. (2003). Orienting attention to locations in internal representations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 1176–1194.
Huang, L., & Pashler, H. (2007). A boolean map theory of visual attention. Psychological Review, 114, 599–631.
Kahneman, D., Treisman, A., & Gibbs, B. J. (1992). The reviewing of object files: Object-specific integration of information. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 174–219.
Kessler, Y., & Meiran, N. (2006). All updateable objects in working memory are updated whenever any of them are modified: Evidence from the memory updating paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 32, 570–585.
Landman, R., Spekreijse, H., & Lamme, V. A. F. (2003). Large capacity storage of integrated objects before change blindness. Vision Research, 43, 149–164.
Luck, S. J., & Vogel, E. K. (1997). The capacity of visual working memory for features and conjunctions. Nature, 390, 279–281.
Makovski, T., & Jiang, Y. V. (2007). Distributing versus focusing attention in visual short-term memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 1072–1978.
Makovski, T., Sussman, R., & Jiang, Y. V. (2008). Orienting attention in visual working memory reduces interference from memory probes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 34, 369–380.
Matsukura, M., & Vecera, S. (2006). The return of object-based attention: Selection of multiple-region objects. Perception & Psychophysics, 68, 1163–1175.
Mitroff, S. R., Scholl, B. J., & Noles, N. S. (2007). Object files can be purely episodic. Perception, 36, 1730–1735.
Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., & Howerter, A. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contribution to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 49–100.
Mohr, H. M., Goebel, R., & Linden, D. E. J. (2006). Content- and task-specific dissociations of frontal activity during maintenance and manipulation in visual working memory. Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 4465–4471.
Mohr, H. M., & Linden, D. E. J. (2005). Separation of the systems for color and spatial manipulation in working memory revealed by a dualtask procedure. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 335–366.
Morris, N., & Jones, D. M. (1990). Memory updating in working memory: The role of the central executive. British Journal of Psychology, 81, 111–121.
Oberauer, K. (2002). Access to information in working memory: Exploring the focus of attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 28, 411–421.
Olivers, C. N. L., Meijer, F., & Theeuwes, J. (2006). Feature-based memory-driven attentional capture: Visual working memory content affects visual attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 32, 1243–1265.
Olson, I. R., & Jiang, Y. (2002). Is visual short-term memory object based? Rejection of the “strong-object⩋ hypothesis. Perception & Psychophysics, 64, 1055–1067.
Pelli, D. G. (1997). The VideoToolbox software for visual psychophysics: Transforming numbers into movies. Spatial Vision, 10, 437–442.
Schanda, J. (2007). Colorimetry: Understanding the CIE system. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Interscience.
Scholl, B. J. (2001). Objects and attention: The state of the art. Cognition, 80, 1–46.
Scholl, B. J., Pylyshyn, Z. W., & Feldman, J. (2001). What is a visual object? Evidence from target merging in multiple object tracking. Cognition, 80, 159–177.
Soto, D., Heinke, D., Humphreys, G. W., & Blanco, M. J. (2005). Early, involuntary top-down guidance of attention from working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 31, 248–261.
Soto, D., Hodsoll, J., Rotshtein, P., & Humphreys, G. W. (2008). Automatic guidance of attention from working memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 342–348.
Soto, D., Humphreys, G. W., & Heinke, D. (2006). Working memory can guide pop-out search. Vision Research, 46, 1010–1018.
Vecera, S. P., & Farah, M. J. (1994). Does visual attention select objects or locations? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123, 146–160.
Vogel, E. K., Woodman, G. F., & Luck, S. J. (2001). Storage of features, conjunctions, and objects in visual working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 27, 92–114.
Watson, S. E., & Kramer, A. F. (1999). Object-based visual selective attention and perceptual organization. Perception & Psychophysics, 61, 31–49.
Wheeler, M. E., & Treisman, A. M. (2002). Binding in short-term visual memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131, 48–64.
Woodman, G. F., & Vogel, E. K. (2008). Selective storage and maintenance of an object’s features in visual working memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 223–229.
Xu, Y. (2002). Encoding color and shape from different parts of an ob ject in visual short-term memory. Perception & Psychophysics, 64, 1260–1280.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ko, P.C., Seiffert, A.E. Updating objects in visual short-term memory is feature selective. Memory & Cognition 37, 909–923 (2009). https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.37.6.909
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.37.6.909