Abstract
It is generally assumed that the storage capacity of visual working memory (VWM) is limited, holding about 3-4 items. Recent work with real-world objects, however, has challenged this view by providing evidence that the VWM capacity for real-world objects is not fixed but instead increases with prolonged encoding time (Brady, Stormer, & Alvarez, 2016). Critically, in this study, no increase with prolonged encoding time was observed for storing simple colors. Brady et al. (2016) argued that the larger capacity for real-world objects relative to colors is due to the additional conceptual information of real-world objects. With basically the same methods of Brady et al., in Experiments 1-3, we were unable to replicate their basic findings. Instead, we found that visual memory for simple colors also benefited from prolonged encoding time. Experiment 4 showed that the scale of the encoding time benefit was the same for familiar and unfamiliar objects, suggesting that the added conceptual information does not contribute to this benefit. We conclude that visual memory benefits from prolonged encoding time regardless of stimulus type.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1998-2005 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition |
Volume | 46 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2020 |
Funding
Xinyu Li and Zijun Xiong equally contributed on to the current research. Xinyu Li, Zijun Xiong, and Benchi Wang designed the experiment. Zijun Xiong collected and analyzed the data. All authors wrote the article together and approved the final version of the manuscript for submission. This research was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Zheji-ang Province (LY18C090007) to Xinyu Li, a China Scholarship Council (CSC) scholarship (201508330313) and the Guangdong Regional Joint Foundation (2019A1515110581) to Benchi Wang.
Keywords
- Encoding time benefits
- Long-term memory
- Real-world objects
- Visual working memory