Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510000, China.
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 55455, USA.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jul 25;7(1):6408. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-06719-6.
Visual working memory (VWM) is a cognitive memory buffer for temporarily holding, processing, and manipulating visual information. Previous studies have demonstrated mixed results of the effect of depth perception on VWM, with some showing a beneficial effect while others not. In this study, we employed an adapted change detection paradigm to investigate the effects of two depth cues, binocular disparity and relative size. The memory array consisted of a set of pseudo-randomly positioned colored items, and the task was to judge whether the test item was changed compared to the memory item after a retention interval. We found that presenting the items in stereoscopic depth alone hardly affected VWM performance. When combining the two coherent depth cues, a significant larger VWM capacity of the perceptually closer-in-depth items was observed than that of the farther items, but the capacity for the two-depth-planes condition was not significantly different from that for the one-plane condition. Conflicting the two depth cues resulted in cancelling the beneficial effect of presenting items at a closer depth plane. The results indicate that depth perception could affect VWM, and the visual system may have an advantage in maintaining closer-in-depth objects in working memory.
视觉工作记忆（VWM）是一种认知记忆缓冲区，用于临时存储、处理和操作视觉信息。先前的研究表明，深度知觉对 VWM 的影响结果不一，有些研究表明有益，而有些则没有。在这项研究中，我们采用了一种改进的变化检测范式来研究两种深度线索，即双目视差和相对大小的影响。记忆数组由一组随机位置的彩色项目组成，任务是在保持间隔后判断测试项目与记忆项目相比是否发生了变化。我们发现，仅呈现立体深度的项目几乎不会影响 VWM 性能。当结合使用两种相干深度线索时，与更远的项目相比，感知上更近的深度平面上的项目的 VWM 容量显著增加，但两深度平面条件的容量与一平面条件的容量没有显著差异。冲突的两种深度线索导致呈现更近深度平面上的项目的有益效果被抵消。结果表明，深度知觉可以影响 VWM，并且视觉系统可能在工作记忆中保持更近的深度物体方面具有优势。
