Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G3, Canada.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2023 Jul;85(5):1612-1630. doi: 10.3758/s13414-022-02650-9. Epub 2023 Jan 4.
Why can't we remember everything that we experience? Previous work in the domain of object memory has suggested that our ability to resolve interference between relevant and irrelevant object features may limit how much we can remember at any given moment. Here, we developed an online mouse-tracking task to study how memory load influences object reconstruction, testing participants synchronously over virtual conference calls. We first tested up to 18 participants concurrently, replicating memory findings from a condition where participants were tested individually. Next, we examined how memory load influenced mouse trajectories as participants reconstructed target objects. We found interference between the contents of working memory and what was perceived during object reconstruction, an effect that interacted with visual similarity and memory load. Furthermore, we found interference from previously studied but currently irrelevant objects, providing evidence of object-to-location binding errors. At the greatest memory load, participants were nearly three times more likely to move their mouse cursor over previously studied nontarget objects, an effect observed primarily during object reconstruction rather than in the period before the final response. As evidence of the dynamic interplay between working memory and perception, these results show that object reconstruction behavior may be altered by (i) interference between what is represented in mind and what is currently being viewed, and (ii) interference from previously studied but currently irrelevant information. Finally, we discuss how mouse tracking can provide a rich characterization of participant behavior at millisecond temporal resolution, enormously increasing power in cognitive psychology experiments.
为什么我们不能记住我们经历的所有事情？之前关于物体记忆的研究表明，我们解决相关和不相关物体特征之间干扰的能力可能会限制我们在任何给定时刻能够记住的内容。在这里，我们开发了一个在线鼠标跟踪任务来研究记忆负荷如何影响物体重建，通过虚拟电话会议同步测试参与者。我们首先同时测试了多达 18 名参与者，复制了参与者单独测试时的条件下的记忆发现。接下来，我们研究了记忆负荷如何影响参与者重建目标物体时的鼠标轨迹。我们发现工作记忆的内容和在物体重建期间感知到的内容之间存在干扰，这种干扰与视觉相似性和记忆负荷有关。此外，我们发现之前研究过但目前不相关的物体也会产生干扰，这提供了物体与位置绑定错误的证据。在最大的记忆负荷下，参与者将鼠标光标移到之前研究过的非目标物体上的可能性几乎增加了三倍，这种效应主要在物体重建期间而不是在最后一次响应之前观察到。作为工作记忆和感知之间动态相互作用的证据，这些结果表明，物体重建行为可能会受到以下因素的影响：（i）头脑中所代表的内容和当前正在观察的内容之间的干扰，以及（ii）之前研究过但目前不相关的信息的干扰。最后，我们讨论了鼠标跟踪如何以毫秒时间分辨率提供参与者行为的丰富特征描述，极大地增加了认知心理学实验的功效。
