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Evidence for the effect of depth on visual working memory

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 empl...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Qian, Jiehui, Li, Jiaofeng, Wang, Kaiyue, Liu, Shengxi, Lei, Quan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5526975/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28744002
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06719-6
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author Qian, Jiehui
Li, Jiaofeng
Wang, Kaiyue
Liu, Shengxi
Lei, Quan
author_facet Qian, Jiehui
Li, Jiaofeng
Wang, Kaiyue
Liu, Shengxi
Lei, Quan
author_sort Qian, Jiehui
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-55269752017-08-02 Evidence for the effect of depth on visual working memory Qian, Jiehui Li, Jiaofeng Wang, Kaiyue Liu, Shengxi Lei, Quan Sci Rep Article 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. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-07-25 /pmc/articles/PMC5526975/ /pubmed/28744002 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06719-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Qian, Jiehui
Li, Jiaofeng
Wang, Kaiyue
Liu, Shengxi
Lei, Quan
Evidence for the effect of depth on visual working memory
title Evidence for the effect of depth on visual working memory
title_full Evidence for the effect of depth on visual working memory
title_fullStr Evidence for the effect of depth on visual working memory
title_full_unstemmed Evidence for the effect of depth on visual working memory
title_short Evidence for the effect of depth on visual working memory
title_sort evidence for the effect of depth on visual working memory
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5526975/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28744002
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06719-6
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