Allgemeine und Experimentelle Psychologie, Department Psychologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Leopoldstr 13, D-80802, München, Germany.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2021 Apr;83(3):1357-1374. doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-02153-5. Epub 2020 Oct 18.
Visual working memory (VWM) is typically considered to represent complete objects-that is, separate parts of an object are maintained as bound objects. Yet it remains unclear whether and how the features of disparate parts are integrated into a whole-object memory representation. Using a change detection paradigm, the present study investigated whether VWM performance varies as a function of grouping strength for features that either determine the grouped object (orientation) or that are not directly grouping relevant (color). Our results showed a large grouping benefit for grouping-relevant orientation features and, additionally, a much smaller, albeit reliable, benefit for grouping-irrelevant color features when both were potentially task relevant. By contrast, when color was the only task-relevant feature, no grouping benefit from the orientation feature was revealed both under lower or relatively high demands for precision. Together, these results indicate that different features of an object are stored independently in VWM; and an emerging, higher-order grouping structure does not automatically lead to an integrated representation of all available features of an object. Instead, an object benefit depends on the specific task demands, which may generate a linked, task-dependent representation of independent features.
视觉工作记忆（VWM）通常被认为代表完整的物体，也就是说，物体的各个部分被维持为绑定的物体。然而，目前尚不清楚离散部分的特征是否以及如何被整合到整体物体记忆表示中。本研究使用变化检测范式，考察了 VWM 性能是否随分组特征的分组强度而变化，这些特征要么决定分组对象（方向），要么与分组不直接相关（颜色）。我们的结果表明，对于与分组相关的方向特征，分组有很大的益处，而且，当两者都可能是任务相关时，对于与分组不相关的颜色特征，也有一个虽然较小但可靠的益处。相比之下，当颜色是唯一与任务相关的特征时，在较低或相对较高的精度要求下，方向特征都没有显示出分组益处。总之，这些结果表明，物体的不同特征在 VWM 中是独立存储的；并且新兴的、更高阶的分组结构并不会自动导致物体所有可用特征的综合表示。相反，物体的益处取决于特定的任务需求，这可能会生成独立特征的、相互关联的、任务相关的表示。
