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.