Curby Kim M, Gauthier Isabel
Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122-6085, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2007 Aug;14(4):620-8. doi: 10.3758/bf03196811.
What determines how much can be stored in visual short-term memory (VSTM)? Studies of VSTM have focused largely on stimulus-based properties such as the number or complexity of the items stored. Recent work also suggests that capacity is severely reduced for items within the same category. However, the importance for VSTM capacity of more qualitative differences in processing for different categories has not been investigated. For example, faces are processed more holistically than other objects. In Experiments 1 and 2, we show that the processing of faces, objects that are crucial socially and for which we possess considerable expertise, overcomes these limitations. More faces can be stored in VSTM than objects from other complex nonface categories. As in prior studies, at short encoding durations we found that capacity for faces was less than that for other categories. However, at longer encoding durations, capacity for faces exceeded that for nonface objects, and this advantage was specific to upright faces. Because inversion reduces holistic processing, the interaction of orientation with VSTM capacity-which occurred for faces but no t objects in Experiment 3--suggests that it is holistic processing that confers an advantage for face VSTM when sufficient encoding time is allowed.
是什么决定了视觉短期记忆（VSTM）中能够存储的信息量？对VSTM的研究主要集中在基于刺激的属性上，比如所存储项目的数量或复杂性。近期研究还表明，同一类别中的项目存储容量会大幅降低。然而，不同类别在处理过程中更具质性差异对VSTM容量的重要性尚未得到研究。例如，面部的处理比其他物体更具整体性。在实验1和实验2中，我们发现，面部（在社交方面至关重要且我们拥有相当专业知识的物体）的处理克服了这些限制。VSTM中能够存储的面部比其他复杂非面部类别的物体更多。与之前的研究一样，在短编码时长下，我们发现面部的存储容量小于其他类别。然而，在较长编码时长下，面部的存储容量超过了非面部物体，并且这种优势特定于正立的面部。由于倒置会减少整体处理，在实验3中出现的方向与VSTM容量之间的相互作用（这种相互作用出现在面部，但未出现在物体上）表明，当给予足够的编码时间时，正是整体处理赋予了面部VSTM优势。
