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

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.

Download Full-text

Cognitive-behavioural and electrophysiological evidence of the affective consequences of ignoring stimulus representations in working memory

10.31234/osf.io/5s4n9 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

David De Vito ◽

Anne E. Ferrey ◽

Mark J. Fenske ◽

Naseem Al-Aidroos

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Visual Working Memory ◽

Visual Stimuli ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Cognitive Behavioural ◽

Wide Range ◽

Effective Selection ◽

Irrelevant Distractors ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Affective Consequences

Ignoring visual stimuli in the external environment leads to decreased liking of those items; a phenomenon attributed to the affective consequences of attentional inhibition. Here we investigated the generality of this ‘distractor devaluation’ phenomenon by asking whether ignoring stimuli represented internally within visual working memory has the same affective consequences. In two experiments we presented participants with two or three visual stimuli and then, after the stimuli were no longer visible, provided an attentional cue indicating which item in memory was the target they would have to later recall, and which were task-irrelevant distractors. Participants subsequently judged how much they liked these stimuli. Previously-ignored distractors were consistently rated less favorably than targets, replicating prior findings of distractor devaluation. To gain converging evidence, in Experiment 2, we also examined the electrophysiological processes associated with devaluation by measuring individual differences in attention (N2pc) and working memory (CDA) event-related potentials following the attention cue. Larger amplitude of an N2pc-like component was associated with greater devaluation, suggesting that individuals displaying more effective selection of memory targets—an act aided by distractor inhibition—displayed greater levels of distractor devaluation. Individuals showing a larger post-cue CDA amplitude (but not pre-cue CDA amplitude) also showed greater distractor devaluation, supporting prior evidence that visual working-memory resources have a functional role in effecting devaluation. Together, these findings demonstrate that ignoring working-memory representations has affective consequences, and add to the growing evidence that the contribution of selective-attention mechanisms to a wide range of human thought and behaviors leads to devaluation.

Download Full-text

Attribute Amnesia in the Auditory Domain

Perception ◽

10.1177/03010066211022175 ◽

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.

Download Full-text