My ambitious solo paper reviewing our field is now online!
"Mapping visual working memory models to a theoretical framework" published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (@psychonomic_soc): https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-023-02356-5
#psychology #science #cognition #cognitivepsychology #visionscience #visualworkingmemory
Mapping visual working memory models to a theoretical framework - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
The body of research on visual working memory (VWM)—the system often described as a limited memory store of visual information in service of ongoing tasks—is growing rapidly. The discovery of numerous related phenomena, and the many subtly different definitions of working memory, signify a challenge to maintain a coherent theoretical framework to discuss concepts, compare models and design studies. A lack of robust theory development has been a noteworthy concern in the psychological sciences, thought to be a precursor to the reproducibility crisis (Oberauer & Lewandowsky, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 26, 1596–1618, 2019). I review the theoretical landscape of the VWM field by examining two prominent debates—whether VWM is object-based or feature-based, and whether discrete-slots or variable-precision best describe VWM limits. I share my concerns about the dualistic nature of these debates and the lack of clear model specification that prevents fully determined empirical tests. In hopes of promoting theory development, I provide a working theory map by using the broadly encompassing memory for latent representations model (Hedayati et al., Nature Human Behaviour, 6, 5, 2022) as a scaffold for relevant phenomena and current theories. I illustrate how opposing viewpoints can be brought into accordance, situating leading models of VWM to better identify their differences and improve their comparison. The hope is that the theory map will help VWM researchers get on the same page—clarifying hidden intuitions and aligning varying definitions—and become a useful device for meaningful discussions, development of models, and definitive empirical tests of theories.
Thought I'd share my preprint, "Mapping visual working memory models to a theoretical framework." https://psyarxiv.com/g8erx
It's a commentary on the state of theory development in my research area of visual working memory (perhaps unusual from an early-career researcher!). It's also my first solo paper – very much looking for feedback! #visualcognition #visualworkingmemory #visionscience #cognition #cognitivepsychology #psychology
Hey
#VisualWorkingMemory researchers,
together with Ven Popov, I have worked on implementing mixture models for continuous reproduction tasks used in Visual WM research in brms. This implementation allows estimating popular mixture models for visual working memory in almost any experimental design using Bayesian hierarchical implementations. To improve usability we have written a small R package „bmm“ and written a tutorial:
http://osf.io/umt57/My paper, "Distinguishing guesses from fuzzy memories: Further evidence for item limits in visual working memory" with @kcs_adam, Joshua Foster and Edward Awh is published!
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-022-02631-y
#psychology #workingmemory #visualworkingmemory
Distinguishing guesses from fuzzy memories: Further evidence for item limits in visual working memory - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
There is consistent debate over whether capacity in working memory (WM) is subject to an item limit, or whether an unlimited number of items can be held in this online memory system. The item limit hypothesis clearly predicts guessing responses when capacity is exceeded, and proponents of this view have highlighted evidence for guessing in visual working memory tasks. Nevertheless, various models that deny item limits can explain the same empirical patterns by asserting extremely low fidelity representations that cannot be distinguished from guesses. To address this ambiguity, we employed a task for which guess responses elicited a qualitatively distinct pattern from low fidelity memories. Inspired by work from Rouder et al. (2014), we employed an orientation WM task that required subjects to recall the precise orientation of each of six memoranda presented 1 s earlier. The orientation stimuli were created by rotating the position of a “clock hand” inside a circular region that was demarcated by four colored quadrants. Critically, when observers guess with these stimuli, the distribution of responses is biased towards the center of these quadrants, creating a “banded” pattern that cannot be explained by a low precision memory. We confirmed the presence of this guessing pattern using formal model comparisons, and we show that the prevalence of this pattern matches observers’ own reports of when they thought they were guessing. Thus, these findings provide further evidence for guessing behaviors predicted by item limit models of WM capacity.
William Ngiam | 严祥全
Gidon Frischkorn