Pan Yi, Zhang Zheyu, Zuo Wuheng
Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2019 Oct;201:102954. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.102954. Epub 2019 Nov 10.
Previous research suggests that the perception of stimulus onset can be accelerated by a match between the contents of visual working memory and the stimulus presented alone in the peripheral visual field. This onset acceleration effect might contribute to previously reported effects of working memory on perceived stimulus duration. However, it remains possible that the contents of visual working memory may also modulate the offset perception of matching visual stimuli, thereby contributing to the modulation of duration perception by working memory. The present study directly tested this possibility by using a simple reaction time task to assess the effect of visual working memory on perceived stimulus offset. Participants were asked to maintain a sample stimulus in working memory and subsequently had to respond to the offset of a single visual target. Across three experiments, we showed that the offset response was reliably slower when the target matched the sample held in visual working memory, as compared with when the target did not. This effect was not likely attributed to the mechanism of repetition priming from the presentation of the sample, because we failed to observe a priming effect either when the sample was only passively viewed without working memory demands or when the sample was initially encoded into memory but did not need to be actively maintained in mind by the time the offset target appeared. The findings provide direct evidence indicating that active maintenance of information in visual working memory delays the perceived offset of matching visual stimuli.
先前的研究表明，视觉工作记忆的内容与外周视野中单独呈现的刺激之间的匹配，可以加速对刺激起始的感知。这种起始加速效应可能有助于解释先前报道的工作记忆对感知刺激持续时间的影响。然而，视觉工作记忆的内容也有可能调节对匹配视觉刺激的结束感知，从而对工作记忆对持续时间感知的调节产生影响。本研究通过使用一个简单的反应时任务来评估视觉工作记忆对感知刺激结束的影响，直接检验了这种可能性。参与者被要求在工作记忆中保持一个样本刺激，随后必须对单个视觉目标的结束做出反应。在三个实验中，我们发现，与目标与视觉工作记忆中保存的样本不匹配时相比，当目标与视觉工作记忆中保存的样本匹配时，结束反应确实更慢。这种效应不太可能归因于样本呈现所产生的重复启动机制，因为当样本只是被被动观看而没有工作记忆要求时，或者当样本最初被编码到记忆中，但在结束目标出现时不需要在脑海中积极保持时，我们都没有观察到启动效应。这些发现提供了直接证据，表明在视觉工作记忆中对信息的积极保持会延迟对匹配视觉刺激的感知结束。
