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Publications (86)
Visual working memory has severe capacity limits, creating a bottleneck for active processing. A key way of mitigating this limitation is by chunking, i.e. compressing several pieces of information into one visual working memory representation. However, despite decades of research, chunking efficiency remains debated because of mixed evidence. We p...
Search efficiency suffers when observers look for multiple targets or a single imprecisely defined target. These conditions prevent a narrow target template, resulting in improved delayed distractor recognition. In our first experiment with hybrid visual and memory search, we investigated the interaction of target variety and target number on searc...
To establish accurate action-outcome associations in the environment, individuals must refrain from assigning value to outcome-irrelevant features. However, studies have largely ignored the role of attentional control processes on action value updating. In the current study, we examined the extent to which working memory—a system that can filter an...
We perform mental rotations in many everyday situations, such as reading a map or following furniture assembling instructions. In a classical mental rotation task, participants are asked to judge whether a rotated stimulus is presented in its mirrored form or its canonical form. Previous results have indicated a degree effect: RT is longer as the a...
Individuals sometimes use social media instead of sleeping or while driving. This fact raises the crucial need for-and challenge of-successfully self-regulating potent social-media temptations. To date, however, empirical evidence showing whether social-media temptations can be self-regulated and how self-regulation can be achieved remains scarce....
Previous research raised the counterintuitive hypothesis that searching for multiple potential targets leads to increased incidental encoding of distractors. Are these previously reported findings due to increased visual working memory (VWM) engagement, or less precise target templates? In four experiments, we examined the effect of VWM load during...
In this work, we relied on electrophysiological methods to characterize the processing stages that are affected by the presence of regularity in a visual search task. EEG was recorded for 72 participants while they completed a visual search task. Depending on the group, the task contained a consistent-mapping condition, a random-mapping condition,...
Recent models of sensorimotor simulation postulate that simulation aids ‘refining’ visual representations of others’ emotional facial expressions through an iterative communication with the visual system. In order to test this aspect of sensorimotor simulation models, in the present investigation we recruited a sample of patients with Moebius syndr...
In the digital age we live in, refraining from procrastinatory social media usage, particularly when conflicting with highly valued goal pursuit, can result in failure and subsequent negative psychological outcomes. Despite mounting interest, existing evidence remains correlational and restricted to mundane contexts. To fill these gaps the current...
In the present study, we examined how real-world objects are represented in long-term memory. Two contrasting views exist with regard to this question: one argues that real-world objects are represented as a set of independent features, and the other argues that they form bound integrate representations. In 5 experiments, we tested the different pr...
As part of filtering irrelevant information from entering visual working memory (VWM) and selecting only the relevant information for further processing, the system should first tag the pieces of information as relevant or irrelevant. We manipulated di culty of tagging items as relevant or irrelevant by applying perceptual grouping cues to investig...
The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake.
Visual working memory (VWM) is traditionally assumed to be immune to proactive interference (PI). However, in a recent study (Endress & Potter, 2014), performance in a visual memory task was superior when all items were unique and hence interference from previous trials was impossible, compared to a standard condition in which a limited set of repe...
Visual working memory (VWM) represents the surrounding world in an active and accessible state, but its capacity is severely limited. To better understand VWM and its limits, we collected data from over 3,800 participants in the canonical change detection task. This unique population-level data-set sheds new light on classic debates regarding VWM c...
Two studies tested whether a mindset manipulation would affect the filtering of distractors from entering visual working memory (VWM). In Study 1, participants completed a concrete mindset manipulation (by repeatedly describing how to perform an action), an abstract mindset manipulation (by repeatedly describing why to perform an action), and a bas...
The possibility that social power improves working memory relative to conditions of powerlessness has been invoked to explain why manipulations of power improve performance in many cognitive tasks. Yet, whether power facilitates working memory performance has never been tested directly. In three studies, we induced high or low sense of power using...
This study compared adaptation to novel statistical learning following different environmental changes. Three groups of participants completed training with a visual search task. For the Consistent-first group, targets and distractors appeared in predefined spatial locations. For the Random-first group training contained no regularity and for the M...
To accomplish even rudimentary tasks, our cognitive system must update its representation of the changing environment. This process relies on visual working memory (VWM), which can actively modify its representations. We argue that this ability depends on a pointer system, such that each representation is stably and uniquely mapped to a specific st...
In recent years, there has been growing research regarding the online nature of visual working memory (VWM). These online aspects are arguably the defining attributes of working memory, but they are challenging to study using traditional behavioral paradigms. One powerful tool to examine online processing in VWM is the contralateral delay activity...
How detailed are long-term-memory representations compared with working memory representations? Recent research has found an equal fidelity bound for both memory systems, suggesting a novel general constraint on memory. Here, we assessed the replicability of this discovery. Participants (total N = 72) were presented with colored real-life objects a...
We investigated the underlying processes that enable improving filtering irrelevant items from entering visual Working Memory (WM). To this end, participants performed a bilateral change-detection task in which either targets or targets along with distractors (i.e., the filtering condition) appeared in the memory array while ERPs were recorded. In...
Recent evidence has suggested that visual working memory (VWM) plays an important role in representing the target prior to initiating a visual search. The more familiar we are with the search target, the more refined the representation of the target (or “target template”) becomes. This sharpening of the target template is thought to underlie the re...
Simulation models of facial expressions propose that sensorimotor regions may increase the clarity of facial expressions representations in extrastriate areas. We monitored the event-related potential marker of visual working memory (VWM) representations, namely the sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN), also termed contralateral dela...
Is Facebook usage bad for mental health? Existing studies provide mixed results, and direct evidence for neural underlying moderators is lacking. We suggest that being able to filter social-network information from accessing working memory is essential to preserve limited cognitive resources to pursue relevant goals. Accordingly, among individuals...
Simulation models of facial expressions propose that sensorimotor regions may increase the clarity of facial expressions representations in extrastriate areas. We monitored the event-related potential marker of visual working memory (VWM) representations, namely the sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN), also termed contralateral dela...
Two main models have been proposed to describe how visual working memory (WM) allocates its capacity: the slot-model and the continuous resource-model. The purpose of the current study was to test a direct prediction of the resource model suggesting that WM can trade-off between the quantity and quality of the encoded information. Previous research...
Current statistical learning theories predict that embedding implicit regularities within a task should further improve online performance, beyond general practice. We challenged this assumption by contrasting performance in a visual search task containing either a consistent-mapping (regularity) condition, a random-mapping condition, or both condi...
The visual working memory (VWM) resetting process is triggered when the mapping between an object in the environment and its corresponding VWM representation becomes irrelevant. Resetting involves discarding the no longer relevant representations, and encoding novel representations and mappings. We examined how resetting operates on VWM’s contents....
We investigated possible compensation mechanisms for improving filtering of distractors from entering visual Working Memory (WM). Participants preformed a change-detection task in which three targets, six targets, or three targets along with three distractors (the filtering trial) were randomly presented. In six experiments, we tried to reduce the...
Significance statement:
Visual working memory (VWM) maintains task-relevant information in an online state. Previous studies showed that VWM representations are accessed and modified after changes in the environment. Here, we show that this updating process critically depends on an ongoing mapping between the representations and the objects in the...
In many research fields the outcome of running an experiment is a raw data file for each subject, containing a table in which each row describes one trial conducted during the experiment. The next step is to merge all files into one big table, and then aggregate it into one finalized table in which each row corresponds (usually) to the averaged per...
Previous research suggested that filtering efficiency (the ability to ignore task irrelevant items) might explain individual differences in Visual Working Memory (VWM) capacity, such that high-capacity individuals have better control over VWM limited workspace by encoding and maintaining only task relevant information. Here, we investigated possibl...
Previous studies have demonstrated that in a visual search task, observers are faster to locate targets when these are presented in repeated rather than random contexts, an effect termed contextual-cuing. Using a random mapping condition and a consistent mapping condition, in which targets and distractor-sets were paired throughout the experiment,...
Items around us constantly change, and visual working memory (VWM) must change its representations accordingly. One way of achieving this is updating, but sometimes changes are too large to be incorporated into existing representations. We suggest that processing such changes relies on a resetting of VWM, a process in which the old representations...
This study investigated whether an item's representation in visual working memory (VWM) can be updated according to changes in the global task context. We used a modified change detection paradigm, in which the items moved before the retention interval. In all of the experiments, we presented identical color-color conjunction items that were arrang...
Visual working memory (WM) can only hold a very limited amount of information, and one way to overcome this capacity limitation is to group several items to one chunk. While perceptual grouping may be regarded as preattentive, grouping in WM should be flexible enough to allow WM representation to adapt to a changing environment. We examined the inf...
Previous research suggests that visual working memory (WM) capacity is closely connected to filtering ability, so that high-capacity individuals are more efficient at filtering out irrelevant information and representing only the relevant items in the limited WM storage space. The interesting prediction is that low capacity individuals should remem...
Previous research argued that filtering efficiency (i.e., the ability to ignore task irrelevant items) might explain individual differences in Visual Working Memory (VWM) capacity, such that low-capacity individuals demonstrate poor filtering efficiency relative to high-capacity individuals. Here, we investigated if low-capacity individuals can com...
What makes an integrated object in visual working memory (WM)? Past evidence suggested that WM holds all features of multidimensional objects together, but struggles to integrate color-color conjunctions. This difficulty was previously attributed to a challenge in same-dimension integration, but here we argue that it arises from the integration of...
In three experiments we manipulated the resolution of novel complex objects in visual working memory (WM) by changing task demands. Previous studies that investigated the trade-off between quantity and resolution in visual WM yielded mixed results for simple familiar stimuli. We used the contralateral delay activity as an electrophysiological marke...
The objects around us constantly move and interact, and the perceptual system needs to monitor on-line these interactions and to update the object's status accordingly. Gestalt grouping principles, such as proximity and common fate, play a fundamental role in how we perceive and group these objects. Here, we investigated situations in which the ini...
When facing strangers, one of the first evaluations people perform is to implicitly assess their trustworthiness. However, the underlying processes supporting trustworthiness appraisal are poorly understood. We hypothesized that visual working memory (VWM) maintains online face representations that are sensitive to physical cues of trustworthiness,...
One critical evaluation concurring to the first impression of others is related to their
perceived trustworthiness, conveyed by a set of facial features, in order to avoid untrustworthy
individuals (and consequent risky social interactions), and to approach trustworthy
individuals for immediate or future cooperation. However, the cognitive mechanis...
Threat-related attentional biases represent a basic survival mechanism. These biases include an engagement bias involving rapid direction of attention toward threat and a disengagement bias involving slow direction of attention away from threat. The exact nature of these biases in healthy and anxious individuals remains controversial because of the...
Some studies found that cognitive functions of human beings may be altered while exposed to radiofrequency radiation (RFR) emitted by cellular phones. In two recent studies, we have found that experiment duration and exposure side (i.e., phone's location--right or left) may have a major influence on the detection of such effects. In this brief foll...
![Fig. 4 Correlations between individual IAT scores and SPCN [Race]...](profile/Roy-Luria/publication/51501311/figure/fig4/AS:277341315059715@1443134730478/Correlations-between-individual-IAT-scores-and-SPCN-Race-indices-when-one_Q320.jpg)
![Fig. 4 Correlations between individual IAT scores and SPCN[Race]...](profile/Roy-Luria/publication/51501311/figure/fig5/AS:325008288174118@1454499422996/Correlations-between-individual-IAT-scores-and-SPCNRace-indices-when-one-face-a-or_Q320.jpg)
We tested the ability of white participants to encode and retain over a brief period of time information about the identity
of white and black people, using faces as stimuli in a standard change detection task and tracking neural activity using electroencephalography.
Neural responses recorded over the posterior parietal cortex reflecting visual wo...
Previous research suggested that working memory (WM) does not play any significant role in visual search. In three experiments, we investigated the search difficulty and individual differences in WM capacity as determinants of WM involvement during visual search tasks, using both behavioral and electrophysiological markers [i.e., the contralateral...
The integrated object view of visual working memory (WM) argues that objects (rather than features) are the building block of visual WM, so that adding an extra feature to an object does not result in any extra cost to WM capacity. Alternative views have shown that complex objects consume additional WM storage capacity so that it may not be represe...
The goal of the present investigation was to discover whether visual working memory maintenance for faces is modulated by facial expression using event-related potentials (ERPs). Each trial consisted of two sequential arrays, a memory array and a test array, each including either two or four faces with neutral or fearful expressions. The faces were...
Human brain theta rhythm has been related to the operation of a generic mechanism involved in error detection processes of different types (e.g., detecting incorrect motor responses or incorrect arithmetic equations). This theta activity seems to be sensitive to error salience or magnitude, that is, stronger theta activity is found with larger or m...
We measured electroencephalographic activity during visual search of a target object among objects available to perception or among objects held in visual short-term memory (VSTM). For perceptual search, a single shape was shown first (pre-cue) followed by a search-array, and the task was to decide whether the pre-cue was or was not in the search-a...
This study examined the time dependence effects of exposure to radiofrequency radiation (RFR) emitted by standard GSM cellular phones on the cognitive functions of humans. A total of 48 healthy right-handed male subjects performed a spatial working memory task (that required either a left-hand or a right-hand response) while being exposed to one of...
Does the capacity of visual short-term memory (VSTM) depend on the complexity of the objects represented in memory? Although some previous findings indicated lower capacity for more complex stimuli, other results suggest that complexity effects arise during retrieval (due to errors in the comparison process with what is in memory) that is not relat...
A number of researchers have emphasized the role of distractors intervening between successive targets as the primary determinant of the attentional blink (AB) phenomenon. They argued that the AB is abolished when 3 or more targets are displayed as temporally contiguous items in rapidly presented serial sequences. In 3 experiments, the authors embe...
A rapid serial visual presentation technique was used to display sequentially two targets, T1 and T2, and monitor P3 amplitude and latency variations associated with the attentional blink (AB) effect. A red T1 digit was embedded on each trial in a sequence of black letters. T2 was either masked by a trailing stimulus or not masked. T1 had to be ide...
In two experiments, participants indicated the identity of a target stimulus along three of its dimensions (shape, fill, and size) in two possible orders that were randomly intermixed. In Experiment 1, the last dimension was identical in both responding orders (i.e., shape-fill-size, and fill-shape-size). The results indicated that order switching...
A change in subtask order in the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm increases the effect of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) on the second response. We used a paradigm with cued, randomly determined subtask order to test the hypothesis that this SOA by order switch overadditivity reflects order control, via "copying" stimulus order. In E...
The present study examined the effects of exposure to Electromagnetic Radiation emitted by a standard GSM phone at 890 MHz on human cognitive functions. This study attempted to establish a connection between the exposure of a specific area of the brain and the cognitive functions associated with that area. A total of 36 healthy right-handed male su...
Increased demands on cognitive control trigger changes in processing mode. One such modulation involves a shift from parallel to serial processing. This study assessed the role of control demand in determining whether dual-task processing is performed serially or in parallel. We used two critical indices, based on the response-selection bottleneck...
The authors examined the role of online order control in the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm. In the first 2 experiments, participants switched between color-letter and letter-color orders so that subtask order was isolated as the only element being switched. The results indicated that order switching impaired the 2 PRP responses and...
