Institute of Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, China.
Department of Psychology, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyväskylä, Finland.
J Vis. 2022 Aug 1;22(9):8. doi: 10.1167/jov.22.9.8.
Most objects show high degrees of spatial regularity (e.g. beach umbrellas appear above, not under, beach chairs). The spatial regularities of real-world objects benefit visual working memory (VWM), but the mechanisms behind this spatial regularity effect remain unclear. The "encoding specificity" hypothesis suggests that spatial regularity will enhance the visual encoding process but will not facilitate the integration of information online during VWM maintenance. The "perception-alike" hypothesis suggests that spatial regularity will function in both visual encoding and online integration during VWM maintenance. We investigated whether VWM integrates sequentially presented real-world objects by focusing on the existence of the spatial regularity effect. Throughout five experiments, we manipulated the presentation (simultaneous vs. sequential) and regularity (with vs. without regularity) of memory arrays among pairs of real-world objects. The spatial regularity of memory objects presented simultaneously, but not sequentially, improved VWM performance. We also examined whether memory load, verbal suppression and masking, and memory array duration hindered the spatial regularity effect in sequential presentation. We found a stable absence of the spatial regularity effect, suggesting that the participants were unable to integrate real-world objects based on spatial regularities online. Our results support the encoding specificity hypothesis, wherein the spatial regularity of real-world objects can enhance the efficiency of VWM encoding, but VWM cannot exploit spatial regularity to help organize sampled sequential information into meaningful integrations.
大多数物体都表现出高度的空间规律性（例如，沙滩伞出现在沙滩椅上方，而不是下方）。现实世界物体的空间规律性有益于视觉工作记忆（VWM），但这种空间规律性效应背后的机制仍不清楚。“编码特异性”假说表明，空间规律性将增强视觉编码过程，但不会促进 VWM 维持期间在线信息的整合。“类似感知”假说则认为，空间规律性将在 VWM 维持期间的视觉编码和在线整合中起作用。我们通过关注空间规律性效应的存在来研究 VWM 是否可以整合顺序呈现的现实世界物体。在五个实验中，我们在一对对现实世界物体之间操纵了记忆数组的呈现（同时或顺序）和规律性（有或无规律性）。同时呈现但不顺序呈现的记忆物体的空间规律性提高了 VWM 表现。我们还检查了记忆负载、言语抑制和掩蔽以及记忆数组持续时间是否会阻碍顺序呈现中的空间规律性效应。我们发现稳定地不存在空间规律性效应，这表明参与者无法根据在线的空间规律性来整合现实世界物体。我们的结果支持编码特异性假说，即现实世界物体的空间规律性可以提高 VWM 编码的效率，但 VWM 无法利用空间规律性来帮助组织采样的顺序信息，使之成为有意义的整合。
