Attribute Amnesia in the Auditory Domain

Perception ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 030100662110221
Author(s):  
Piers Douglas Lionel Howe ◽  
Serene Bee Wen Lee
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Boundary Conditions ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Auditory Stimulus ◽  
Cortical Areas ◽  
Visual Domain

Individuals are often unable to report an attribute of an object to which they recently attended, if they expected to report a different attribute, a phenomenon known as attribute amnesia (AA). To date, all AA studies have occurred in the visual domain. The purpose of this study was to explore the boundary conditions of AA by testing if AA also occurs in the auditory domain and, if so, for which attributes. It was found that AA was present when reporting the location ( p =  .003) and the number of tones ( p <  .001) of an auditory stimulus, but not when reporting its pitch ( p =  .383). These findings can be understood in terms of the organisation of the primary cortical areas and help explain the differences between visual working memory and auditory working memory.

scholarly journals Can you have multiple attentional templates? Large-scale replications of Van Moorselaar, Theeuwes and Olivers (2014) and Hollingworth and Beck (2016)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcella Frătescu ◽  
Dirk Van Moorselaar ◽  
Sebastiaan Mathôt
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Boundary Conditions ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Multiple State ◽  
Bias Attention ◽  
Larger Sample

AbstractStimuli that resemble the content of visual working memory (VWM) capture attention. However, theories disagree on how many VWM items can bias attention simultaneously. The multiple-state account posits a distinction between template and accessory VWM items, such that only a single template item biases attention. In contrast, homogenous-state accounts posit that all VWM items bias attention. Recently, Van Moorselaar et al. (2014) and Hollingworth and Beck (2016) tested these accounts, but obtained seemingly contradictory results. Van Moorselaar et al. (2014) found that a distractor in a visual-search task captured attention more when it matched the content of VWM (memory-driven capture). Crucially, memory-driven capture disappeared when more than one item was held in VWM, in line with the multiple-state account. In contrast, Hollingworth and Beck (2016) found memory-driven capture even when multiple items were kept in VWM, in line with a homogenous-state account. Considering these mixed results, we replicated both studies with a larger sample, and found that all key results are reliable. It is unclear to what extent these divergent results are due to paradigm differences between the studies. We conclude that is crucial to our understanding of VWM to determine the boundary conditions under which memory-driven capture occurs.

scholarly journals Improving Visual Working Memory With Training on a Tactile Orientation Sequence Task in Humans

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110315
Author(s):  
Ting Guo ◽  
Yanna Ren ◽  
Yinghua Yu ◽  
Yiyang Yu ◽  
Yuuki Hasegawa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Sensory Modality ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Visual Orientation ◽  
Visuospatial Task ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Task Training ◽  
Tactile Working Memory ◽  
Visual Domain

Working memory refers to the cognitive capacity to temporarily store and manipulate information from multiple sensory domains. Recent studies have shown that cognitive training can improve performance in both visual working memory and tactile working memory tasks. However, it is still unclear whether the effects of training can be transferred from one sensory modality to another. The current study assessed whether the training effect of the tactile orientation sequence task could transfer to visual orientation sequence and visuospatial working memory tasks. The results showed that participants’ accuracy in the tactile orientation sequence task was significantly increased after 9 days of training compared with that before training. Remarkably, participants’ accuracy in both the visual orientation sequence task and the visuospatial task was significantly improved after 9 days of training. These results suggest that it is possible to improve visual working memory through a transfer effect from tactile task training without practice in the visual domain, which opens a wide range of applications for tactile orientation sequence tasks.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document