Department of Psychology, Manchester University, North Manchester, IN 46962, USA.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2013 May;39(3):760-72. doi: 10.1037/a0029496. Epub 2012 Jul 30.
The serial and spatially extended nature of many real-world visual tasks suggests the need for control over the content of visual working memory (VWM). We examined the management of VWM in a task that required participants to prioritize individual objects for retention during scene viewing. There were 5 principal findings: (a) Strategic retention of task-relevant objects was effective and was dissociable from the current locus of visual attention; (b) strategic retention was implemented by protection from interference rather than by preferential encoding; (c) this prioritization was flexibly transferred to a new object as task demands changed; (d) no-longer-relevant items were efficiently eliminated from VWM; and (e) despite this level of control, attended and fixated objects were consolidated into VWM regardless of task relevance. These results are consistent with a model of VWM control in which each fixated object is automatically encoded into VWM, replacing a portion of the content in VWM. However, task-relevant objects can be selectively protected from replacement.
许多现实世界视觉任务的连续性和空间扩展性表明，需要控制视觉工作记忆 (VWM) 的内容。我们在一项任务中检查了 VWM 的管理，该任务要求参与者在观看场景时优先考虑单个对象以进行保留。主要有 5 个发现：(a) 对任务相关对象的策略性保留是有效的，并且与当前视觉注意力的位置不同；(b) 策略性保留是通过防止干扰而不是通过优先编码来实现的；(c) 随着任务需求的变化，这种优先级可以灵活地转移到新的对象上；(d) 不再相关的项目可以从 VWM 中有效地消除；(e) 尽管存在这种控制，但无论任务相关性如何，注视和注视的对象都会被整合到 VWM 中。这些结果与 VWM 控制模型一致，该模型认为每个注视的对象都会自动编码到 VWM 中，从而替换 VWM 中的一部分内容。但是，可以有选择地保护任务相关对象免受替换。
