Department of Psychology and Behavior Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2011 Dec;37(6):1803-23. doi: 10.1037/a0025637. Epub 2011 Oct 17.
Mainstream theories of visual perception assume that visual working memory (VWM) is critical for integrating online perceptual information and constructing coherent visual experiences in changing environments. Given the dynamic interaction between online perception and VWM, we propose that how visual information is processed during visual perception can directly determine how the information is going to be selected, consolidated, and maintained in VWM. We demonstrate the validity of this hypothesis by investigating what kinds of perceptual information can be stored as integrated objects in VWM. Three criteria for object-based storage are introduced: (a) automatic selection of task-irrelevant features, (b) synchronous consolidation of multiple features, and (c) stable maintenance of feature conjunctions. The results show that the outputs of parallel perception meet all three criteria, as opposed to the outputs of serial attentive processing, which fail all three criteria. These results indicate that (a) perception and VWM are not two sequential processes, but are dynamically intertwined; (b) there are dissociated mechanisms in VWM for storing information identified at different stages of perception; and (c) the integrated object representations in VWM originate from the "preattentive" or "proto" objects created by parallel perception. These results suggest how visual perception, attention, and VWM can be explained by a unified framework.
主流的视觉感知理论假设，视觉工作记忆（VWM）对于整合在线感知信息和在不断变化的环境中构建连贯的视觉体验至关重要。鉴于在线感知和 VWM 之间的动态交互，我们提出，在视觉感知过程中，视觉信息是如何被处理的，可以直接决定信息将如何在 VWM 中被选择、巩固和保持。我们通过研究 VWM 中可以作为集成对象存储的感知信息种类，验证了这一假设的有效性。引入了三个基于对象的存储标准：（a）自动选择与任务无关的特征，（b）多个特征的同步整合，以及（c）特征结合的稳定维持。结果表明，平行感知的输出满足所有三个标准，而串行注意处理的输出则三个标准都不满足。这些结果表明：（a）感知和 VWM 不是两个连续的过程，而是动态交织的；（b）VWM 中存在用于存储在感知的不同阶段识别的信息的分离机制；（c）VWM 中的集成对象表示源自平行感知创建的“前注意”或“原”对象。这些结果表明，如何通过一个统一的框架来解释视觉感知、注意力和 VWM。
