Research Focus
Visual working memory depends on attentional filtering

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Working memory holds information actively being used in cognitive performance. Two important aspects of working memory are how many items it can hold, and how efficiently it can be used. Recently, Vogel and colleagues used event-related brain potentials to show that these two things are related. People who could remember more objects from a spatial array also more efficiently excluded irrelevant objects. The results raise important questions about what aspect of working memory is most fundamental.

Section snippets

Tapping into working memory

The basic procedure for assessing working memory is elegant [9]. A standard array of objects is briefly presented and then a second, comparison array is presented after a short interval – either identical to the first array or differing in a feature of one object. The observers' task is to indicate whether the comparison array has changed. This sort of task is easy with two or three objects per array and becomes increasingly difficult as the number of array objects increases beyond four. Vogel

Why do high-capacity individuals remember more?

Several unresolved issues for further research emerge from this picture. One of them is why individuals with better control of filtering have an advantage in remembering arrays without distracters. Perhaps it is because items in the task-irrelevant hemifield of the display in this procedure 8, 10 function as distracters.

Alternatively, related mechanisms might affect the scope and control of attention [14]. For maximal performance, an individual's focus must efficiently zoom out to apprehend the

Why do low-capacity individuals fail?

Second, it is unknown why low-capacity individuals fail to filter out the irrelevant items. Perhaps participants face a strategic choice. Performance depends on the transfer of information from sensory memory to a more consolidated, abstract form [15], and it might take extra effort to transfer it selectively. That extra effort should pay off, allowing array comparisons to consider relevant items only. Low-capacity individuals might forego this extra processing because, for them, it is

What will behavioral data show?

Third, the behavioral data might also help to clarify the picture. In this case [8], the authors omitted detailed behavioral evidence (e.g. individual differences in capacity in sets with and without distracters). In future, it would be helpful to determine whether the observed individual differences can be obtained behaviorally without items in a task-irrelevant hemifield, so that all potential distracters are eliminated from what is defined as the no-distraction condition. It also is

Acknowledgements

This author is supported by NIH Grant R01 HD-21338.

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