Vogel E K, Woodman G F, Luck S J
Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, USA.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2001 Feb;27(1):92-114. doi: 10.1037//0096-1523.27.1.92.
Working memory can be divided into separate subsystems for verbal and visual information. Although the verbal system has been well characterized, the storage capacity of visual working memory has not yet been established for simple features or for conjunctions of features. The authors demonstrate that it is possible to retain information about only 3-4 colors or orientations in visual working memory at one time. Observers are also able to retain both the color and the orientation of 3-4 objects, indicating that visual working memory stores integrated objects rather than individual features. Indeed, objects defined by a conjunction of four features can be retained in working memory just as well as single-feature objects, allowing many individual features to be retained when distributed across a small number of objects. Thus, the capacity of visual working memory must be understood in terms of integrated objects rather than individual features.
工作记忆可分为用于言语和视觉信息的独立子系统。尽管言语系统已得到充分表征，但视觉工作记忆对于简单特征或特征组合的存储容量尚未确定。作者证明，视觉工作记忆一次只能保留3 - 4种颜色或方向的信息。观察者还能够保留3 - 4个物体的颜色和方向，这表明视觉工作记忆存储的是整合后的物体而非单个特征。实际上，由四个特征组合定义的物体与单特征物体一样能够保留在工作记忆中，当分布在少量物体上时，就能保留许多个体特征。因此，视觉工作记忆的容量必须从整合后的物体而非单个特征的角度来理解。
