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Color Relations Increase the Capacity of Visual Short-Term Memory
Abstract
Do color relations such as similarity or harmony influence the ease with which colored patterns can be perceived and held in mind? We tested the influence of a relation supported in research on color harmony--similarity of hue--on the capacity of visual short-term memory (VSTM) for colors in patterns. Palettes of 4 similar-hue colors were rated as more pleasant (harmonious) than dissimilar-color palettes. The palettes were used in a VSTM color task. Patterns of 9 to 15 colored squares were presented, and accuracy of color change detection was measured. Memory performance was higher overall for similar-color palettes than for dissimilar-color palettes (experiments 1 and 3). Is this due to color similarity per se, or due to the harmony between colors in similar palettes? A final experiment provided strong support for the importance of color similarity as opposed to harmony. Overall, the advantages for color similarity, in terms of number of color squares held in memory (memory capacity) were 26% to 45% over dissimilar colors. The results indicate that color relations can have a strong impact on the capacity for perceiving and retaining color patterns.
... Within this perspective, distractor similarity may therefore help or hinder memory depending on the nature of the task (Sun, Fidalgo, et al., 2017). In some cases, similar distractors may help memory when the preserved coarse-grained information can serve as a reminder of the target item (Hanczakowski, Beaman, & Jones, 2017;Jiang et al., 2016;Lin & Luck, 2009;Mate & Baques, 2009;Morey, 2018;Sanocki & Sulman, 2011). In other cases, this benefit from similar distractors may instead manifest as a memory impairment when the coarse-grained information cannot be used to disambiguate between distractor and target items (Barense et al., et al., 2013). ...
... specifically, we believe that similarity can either help or hinder memory depending on the kinds of representations needed to perform a task. In tasks when preserved coarse-grained information from similar distractors is sufficient to serve as a reminder of the target item, similarity can benefit memory(Jiang et al., 2016;Lin & Luck, 2009;Mate & Baques, 2009;Morey, 2018;Sanocki & Sulman, 2011). For example, researchers have shown that auditory distraction can help memory when the coarse-grained category information of sounds are cued ...
Previous work suggests that the similarity of distracting information differentially alters how memories are forgotten. Though these effects have been shown for color memory, it is unclear if they extend to other modalities such as shape. In a first experiment, we created the Validated Circular Shape Space (VCS space), the first perceptually uniform 'Shape Wheel' whereby subjective similarity was empirically quantified by angular distance on a 2D circle. In a second experiment, we utilized VCS space to examine the impact of distractor similarity on shape memory. A converging set of mixture model and model-free analyses revealed that distractor similarity differentially impacted memory detail. Dissimilar distractors disrupted both fine- and coarse-grained information, rendering the memory inaccessible. In contrast, similar distractors disrupted fine-grained but increased the reliance on coarse-grained information, rendering the memory blurred. As these effects were consistent across domains for both color and shape, we suggest these findings provide converging evidence for a set of general principles regarding how the nature of distracting information impacts memory. More generally, VCS space can be used to not only quantify subjective similarity but to also quantify memory fidelity for shape, a currently underexplored feature type in memory experiments.
... To be clear, it is not that more similar stimuli are easier to distinguish, it's that the precision with which a stimulus is remembered is higher when it is presented in the context of more similar (as opposed to less similar) stimuli. For example, a particular red stimulus will be remembered with greater precision when encoded in the context of other reddish stimuli, as opposed to when it is presented among dissimilar, say, green and yellow, colors (Lin & Luck, 2009;Sanocki & Sulman, 2011). Similarly, experiments on line length and orientation (Sims et al., 2012), and shape (Mate & Baqués, 2009) showed that precision was higher in a condition with lower variance among stimuli. ...
It is challenging to quantify the accuracy and precision of scene memory because it is unclear what ‘space’ scenes occupy (how can we quantify error when misremembering a natural scene?). To address this, we exploited the ecologically valid, metric space in which scenes occur and are represented: routes. In a delayed estimation task, participants briefly saw a target scene drawn from a video of an outdoor ‘route loop’, then used a continuous report wheel of the route to pinpoint the scene. Accuracy was high and unbiased, indicating there was no net boundary extension/contraction. Interestingly, precision was higher for routes that were more self-similar (as characterized by the half-life, in meters, of a route’s Multiscale Structural Similarity index), consistent with previous work finding a ‘similarity advantage’ where memory precision is regulated according to task demands. Overall, scenes were remembered to within a few meters of their actual location.
... The association of hues has been investigated in some studies exploring harmonious color patterns and demonstrated to be advantageous for cognitive processing. For instance, Sanocki and Sulman (2011) employed similar hues to create harmonious color schemes that effectively enhance the capacity of working memory. In addition, varying shades within an identical hue in hypermedia educational settings showed a positive impact on attention maintenance (Venni and Bétrancourt, 2020). ...
Color has considerable effects on physiological and psychological perception during human-machine interaction. However, previous studies either compared whole sets of color schemes or only looked at single colors. This paper quantitively explored the physio-psychological underpinnings of the perceptual overload problem brought on by excessive color quantity involving expanding variety of colors and chromatic areas. Further, we applied the Gestalt Similarity law to determine if color grouping could improve visual perception. Twenty-two participants viewed color stimuli with their brain activity, subjective emotional experience, and visual discomfort being measured, reflecting three aspects of visual perception. The time-frequency analysis on electroencephalographic (EEG) revealed that increasing color quantity caused a boosted activation of delta, theta, and gamma bands in the parietal and occipital lobes, consistent with higher subjective emotional arousal. Color Gestalt substantially decreased the intensity of visual cortex activity and emotional arousal while enhancing visual comfort. The present Similarity grouping method, in that colors are different in saturation and brightness but identical in hue, broadened the grouping criteria in previous Gestalt research that employed identical colors.
... Similarly, in the list "cat, fat, mat," people might activate the rhyme category "/aet/" and use it to maintain all items more easily. This recall advantage for similar vs. dissimilar items has been observed in the visual (Lin & Luck, 2009;Peterson & Berryhill, 2013;Quinlan & Cohen, 2012;Sanocki & Sulman, 2011), phonological (Fallon et al., 1999;Gupta et al., 2005;Nimmo & Roodenrys, 2004), visuospatial (De Lillo, 2004;Parmentier et al., 2005Parmentier et al., , 2006, and semantic (Monnier & Bonthoux, 2011;Neale & Tehan, 2007;Poirier & Saint-Aubin, 1995;Saint-Aubin & Poirier, 1999) domains, suggesting that this beneficial effect of similarity is a domain-general property of the human cognitive system. A recent work suggests an indirect benefit of compression (Kowialiewski et al., 2022b): when the first items of a list to be remembered are similar, they are obviously better recalled than dissimilar items. ...
The ability to compress information is a fundamental cognitive function. It allows working memory (WM) to overcome its severely limited capacity. Recent evidence suggests that the similarity between items can be used to compress information, leading to a rich pattern of behavioral results. This work presents a series of simulations showing that this rich pattern of WM performance is captured using the principles of TBRS*, a decay and refreshing architecture. By assuming that similar items are compressed, the architecture can explain the beneficial effect of similarity on the items themselves. The architecture also explains the fact that when similar items are mixed with dissimilar items, this provides a proactive - but no retroactive - benefit on WM performance. In addition, the model captures fine-grained patterns of transposition errors recently reported. Several analyses are reported showing the robustness of the model’s predictions. We reached the conclusion that decay and refreshing theories provide a plausible explanation for compression effects in WM. These conclusions are discussed in light of recent experimental results. The importance of computational modeling for testing theories is emphasized.
... Dadurch bleiben für die restlichen, ungruppierten Items mehr Slots übrig. Durch die perzeptuelle Gruppe wird also die Kapazität des VKZG gesteigert(Sanocki & Sulman, 2011). Die zweite Überlegung geht hingegen von einem anderen Konzept aus und bringt die Aufmerksamkeit der Probanden ins Spiel. ...
Viele Studien finden eine verbesserte Performanz des visuellen Kurzzeitgedächtnisses im Change-Detection-Paradigma bei Gruppierung von Objekten durch Gestaltfaktoren (Quinlan & Cohen, 2012). Dies kann an einer durch Binding gesteigerten Kapazität oder an einer Aufmerksamkeitsverlagerung liegen. Diese Studie variiert die Gruppierung durch Nähe und Ähnlichkeit systematisch und versucht mithilfe eines binär-logistischen Regressionsmodells, die zwei potenziell dahinterstehenden Mechanismen zu überprüfen. Die Daten lassen sich mit wenigen Parametern gut modellieren und sprechen für ein gleichzeitiges Wirken beider Prozesse. Gruppierung durch Ähnlichkeit fängt dabei die Aufmerksamkeit und erhöht die Kapazität, während Gruppierung durch Nähe zwar auch die Aufmerksamkeit fängt, allerdings nicht die Kapazität erhöht. Darüber hinaus stellt sich heraus, dass es im verwendeten Paradigma am schwierigsten ist, einen Ortswechsel von Objekten festzustellen. Ferner werden Limitationen der Modelle und weitere Forschungsansätze diskutiert.
... In the visual domain, studies conducted so far converge toward a facilitative effect of between-item similarity on WM performance. Increased performance has been observed following the manipulation of color similarity, both in simultaneous and sequential presentations (Lin & Luck, 2009;Quinlan & Cohen, 2012;Sanocki & Sulman, 2011). This advantage for similar colors is all the more present that the similar colors are spatially close to each other during encoding (Peterson & Berryhill, 2013). ...
Compression, the ability to recode information in a denser format, is a core property of working memory (WM). Previous studies have shown that the ability to compress information largely benefits WM performance. Importantly, recent evidence also suggests compression as freeing up WM resources, thus enhancing recall performance for other, less compressible information. Contrary to the traditional view positing that between-item similarity decreases WM performance, this study shows that between-item similarity can be used to free up WM resources through compression. Across a series of four experiments, we show that between-item similarity not only enhances recall performance for similar items themselves, but also for other, less compressible items within the same list, and this in the semantic (Experiment 1), phonological (Experiment 2), visuospatial (Experiment 3), and visual (Experiment 4) domains. Across these different domains, a consistent pattern of results emerged: between-item similarity proactively – but did not retroactively – enhanced WM performance for other items, and this as compared to a condition in which between-item similarity at the whole-list level was minimized. We propose that between-item similarity in any domain may impact WM using the same underlying machinery: via a compression mechanism, which allows an efficient reallocation of WM resources.
... Unfortunately, little literacy resources could be found on this topic. From the limited articles acquired from Color relations increase the capacity of visual short-term memory by Sanocki & Sulman [7], it could be seen that the use of color could indeed make a difference in memory, specifically, the use of similar-color would aid the distinguish between different colors, but not similar colors. The results between of B&W and colored pictures would agree with the first part of this conclusion, for there is a difference between the results. ...
... Lin and Luck (2009), for example, used a color change detection task and found that performance improved when the objects in an array were similar (e.g., all red), in comparison to when they were dissimilar. Other evidence is consistent with this finding (e.g., Makovski et al., 2010;Sanocki & Sulman, 2011), but these previous studies explored concurrent interference, in which interactions among stimuli in an array are examined, rather than RI. ...
Retroactive interference occurs when new information disrupts the retention of an existing representation, but its effects on visual short-term memory remain poorly understood. The present study examined three factors predicted to influence domain-specific retroactive interference, including the type of distractor, its temporal position, and the length of the retention interval. Participants compared target and test objects over a brief interval that either was unfilled or contained a similar or dissimilar distractor occurring 200 ms or 1.5 s after the target offset. Retention was influenced by the temporal position of the distractor and its relationship with the to-be-remembered target. Specifically, retroactive interference was only observed following the presentation of a dissimilar distractor that occurred 1.5 s after the target. These results suggest that novel distractors may be particularly interfering.
... Indeed there is a growing body of evidence showing the importance of how color influences memory for tbr items over the short term. Lin and Luck (2009) have documented how tbr items of highly similar colors are better remembered than items of dissimilar colors (see also Sanocki & Sulman, 2011). Peterson and Berryhill (2013) have shown how items that share a common color within a memory display are better remembered than items that possess unique colors-although the benefit was limited to items that both shared a common color and were proximal to one another. ...
We conducted a series of recognition experiments that assessed whether visual short-term memory (VSTM) is sensitive to shared category membership of to-be-remembered (tbr) images of common objects. In Experiment 1 some of the tbr items shared the same basic level category (e.g., hand axe): Such items were no better retained than others. In the remaining experiments, displays contained different images of items from the same higher-level category (e.g., food: a bagel, a sandwich, a pizza). Evidence from the later experiments did suggest that participants were sensitive to the categorical relations present in the displays. However, when separate measures of sensitivity and bias were computed, the data revealed no effects on sensitivity, but a greater tendency to respond positively to noncategory items relative to items from the depicted category. Across all experiments, there was no evidence that items from a common category were better remembered than unique items. Previous work has shown that principles of perceptual organization do affect the storage and maintenance of tbr items. The present work shows that there are no corresponding conceptual principles of organization in VSTM. It is concluded that the sort of VSTM tapped by single probe recognition methods is precategorical in nature. (PsycINFO Database Record
... Recently, Sanocki and Sulman also found that harmony increased the capacity of visual shortterm memory. 10 Our work has been motivated by and is built on top of this line of research. ...
We present an interactive visualization tool for generating color schemes that can be used by both professional artists and novice designers to improve their design efficiency. The method is developed on two color harmony principles of familial factors and rhythmic spans from conventional color theories. The interactive tool makes use of these principles for users to interactively generate colors palettes containing harmonious combinations in the hue, saturation, and lightness color space in as few steps as possible. A pilot study with 20 participants has shown that this tool provides efficient workflow, color-scheme harmony, and intuitive interaction, demonstrating the usefulness of the method. This work contributes to an artistic-theory driven harmonious color-scheme generation and to interactive user interfaces visualizing color relationships. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 39, 70–78, 2014
... Brady and Alvarez (2011) have demonstrated that ensemble statistics, such as the mean size of task-relevant features in a display, influence the storage of items in visual working memory. Other experiments have demonstrated that there is a similarity advantage in visual working memory (Lin & Luck, 2009; Mate & Baqués, 2009; Sanocki & Sulman, 2011), such that performance and capacity estimates tend to be higher when stimuli are homogeneous or low variance. Interestingly, Lin and Luck (2009) found that the advantage for low-variance stimuli held regardless of whether feature variance remained constant for a block of trials or changed from trial to trial in unpredictable fashion. ...
Limits in visual working memory (VWM) strongly constrain human performance across many tasks. However, the nature of these limits is not well understood. In this article we develop an ideal observer analysis of human VWM by deriving the expected behavior of an optimally performing but limited-capacity memory system. This analysis is framed around rate-distortion theory, a branch of information theory that provides optimal bounds on the accuracy of information transmission subject to a fixed information capacity. The result of the ideal observer analysis is a theoretical framework that provides a task-independent and quantitative definition of visual memory capacity and yields novel predictions regarding human performance. These predictions are subsequently evaluated and confirmed in 2 empirical studies. Further, the framework is general enough to allow the specification and testing of alternative models of visual memory (e.g., how capacity is distributed across multiple items). We demonstrate that a simple model developed on the basis of the ideal observer analysis-one that allows variability in the number of stored memory representations but does not assume the presence of a fixed item limit-provides an excellent account of the empirical data and further offers a principled reinterpretation of existing models of VWM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
The article presents the results of experimental studies of two visual communication systems. The analysis of biometric data obtained as a result of neuromarketing experiments on the study of visual identifiers of territories – coats of arms and logos was carried out. The interrelation of the visual prominence of symbols with its color solutions is investigated, the assessment of perceptual fluency in processing and the impact on memorability in the consumer is carried out. The visual prominence of identity in a competitive environment is revealed. It is shown that the use of heraldry as a modern brand identification system is somewhat difficult. Therefore, its development is associated with the development and promotion of easy-to-interpret, visually noticeable symbols that can be fluently perceived in the chain of mnemic processes associated with the assimilation of visual information.
Recent works in computer vision and multimedia have shown that image memorability can be automatically inferred exploiting powerful deep-learning models. This article advances the state of the art in this area by addressing a novel and more challenging issue: “ Given an arbitrary input image, can we make it more memorable? ” To tackle this problem, we introduce an approach based on an editing-by-applying-filters paradigm: given an input image, we propose to automatically retrieve a set of “style seeds,” i.e., a set of style images that, applied to the input image through a neural style transfer algorithm, provide the highest increase in memorability. We show the effectiveness of the proposed approach with experiments on the publicly available LaMem dataset, performing both a quantitative evaluation and a user study. To demonstrate the flexibility of the proposed framework, we also analyze the impact of different implementation choices, such as using different state-of-the-art neural style transfer methods. Finally, we show several qualitative results to provide additional insights on the link between image style and memorability.
Whether visual short-term memory can be lost over an unfilled delay, in line with time-dependent forgetting, is controversial and prior work has yielded mixed results. The present study explored time-dependent forgetting in visual short-term memory in relation to other factors. In three experiments, participants compared single target and probe objects over a 2 s or 10 s retention interval. The objects across trials were either similar or dissimilar (Experiment 1) and had to be remembered in the presence of an additional distractor (Experiment 2) or under conditions where the amount of time separating trials varied (Experiment 3). In all experiments, the retention interval manipulation made the biggest contribution to performance, with accuracy decreasing as the retention interval was lengthened from 2 s to 10 s. These results pose problems for interference and temporal distinctiveness models of memory but are compatible with temporal forgetting mechanisms such as decay.
Object similarity can improve visual working memory (VWM) performance in the change-detection task, but impair the recognition performance when it occurs at retrieval of VWM in the recognition task. The effect of direction similarity is an issue that has not been well resolved. Furthermore, electrophysiological evidence in support of the mechanisms that underlie the effects of similarity is still scarce. In the current study, we conducted three behavioural experiments to examine the effects of direction similarity on memory performance with regard to both the encoding and retrieval phases of VWM and one event-related potential (ERP) experiment to explore the neural signatures of direction similarity in VWM. Our behavioural studies indicated that direction similarity improved performance when it occurred at the encoding phase but impaired performance when it occurred at the retrieval phase. Moreover, the ERP experiment showed that the amplitude of the contralateral delay activity (CDA) increased with the set size increasing for similar but not dissimilar directions. In addition, the CDA amplitude for similar directions was lower than that for dissimilar directions at set size 2. Taken together, these findings suggest that direction similarity at encoding has a positive effect on VWM performance and it at retrieval has a negative effect. Given that VWM capacity depends on information load and the number of objects, the positive effect of similarity may be attributed to reduced information load of memory objects.
Visual short-term memory (VSTM) refers to our ability in remembering visual information for a limited amount of time. In the VSTM literature, mixed findings have been reported regarding whether items are encoded individually or globally in the context of other items. This study adopted a color change detection task and manipulated color and spatial relations of the items on display to test whether inter-item relational information and processing can facilitate change detection performance. Results showed that only when a post-cue was presented to reduce decision load (Experiments 1 and 3), both color and spatial relations facilitated color change detection. However, when there was no post-cue to lessen the decision load, preserving spatial relations at test impaired color change detection (Experiment 2). Furthermore, spatial and color relational processing interactively affected color change detection. Benefit of the spatial relations was observed only when color grouping cues can aid change detection, and the utilization of color relations was optimized when spatial relations were preserved to cue the retrieval of color relations. Our results support the hierarchical representation hypothesis, which assumes that both individual items and item relations are encoded and maintained in VSTM. The amount of cognitive resources for retrieving different levels of representations is highly constrained by the decision load.
Working memory can be divided into separate subsystems for verbal and visual information. Although the verbal system has been well characterized, the storage capacity of visual working memory has not yet been established for simple features or for conjunctions of features. The authors demonstrate that it is possible to retain information about only 3-4 colors or orientations in visual working memory at one time. Observers are also able to retain both the color and the orientation of 3-4 objects, indicating that visual working memory stores integrated objects rather than individual features. Indeed, objects defined by a conjunction of four features can be retained in working memory just as well as single-feature objects, allowing many individual features to be retained when distributed across a small number of objects. Thus, the capacity of visual working memory must be understood in terms of integrated objects rather than individual features.
Twenty-one subjects rated a random sequence of 144 color pairs on a categorical scale ranging from 1 (harmonizing) to 7 (clashing). Another group of 35 subjects rated each individual color on a set of semantic differential scales. The colors were also scaled objectively in terms of Munsell measures for hue, chroma, and value. The color harmony ratings were analyzed by using multidimensional scaling and invoking a weighted individual-differences Euclidean distance model. A two-dimensional solution accounted for 83.1% of the variability in the transformed data matrices. On the basis of supplementary regression analyses, it was found that hue, value (brightness), and the psychological attribute “pleasantness,” were the factors that influenced the color harmony judgments. In general, harmonious color combinations involved colors that were similar with regard to these attributes.
This chapter summarizes the data of color matching, detection of spectral lights, and discrimination of lights on the basis of differences in chromaticity. Matching, detection, and discrimination are tasks in which the spectral content of the lights is an important parameter. The tasks involve either identity matching or detection of a just noticeable difference. Data are expressed in physical units. The color appearance at the identity match or at the just noticeable difference is irrelevant and rarely noted. The data of matching, detection, and discrimination have been modeled successfully by considering early retinal processing. All the phenomena described in this chapter can be modeled by the activity of parvocellular (PC-), koniocellular (KC-) and magnocellular (MC-) pathways. The chapter focuses on the classical studies in the literature. These studies have involved small (1. o or 2. o) or moderate (10. o) sized foveally fixated, circular stimuli. Luminance levels of matching and discrimination stimuli are usually at low to medium photopic levels, with retinal illuminations of 5-1000 trolands (td). In detection studies, large concentric backgrounds are often employed and light levels may extend to levels where substantial photopigment bleaching occurs.
This study investigates harmony in two-colour combinations in order to develop a quantitative model. A total of 1431 colour pairs were used as stimuli in a psychophysical experiment for the visual assessment of harmony. These colour pairs were generated using 54 colours selected systematically from CIELAB colour space. During the experiment, observers were presented with colour pairs displayed individually against a medium gray background on a cathode ray tube monitor in a darkened room. Colour harmony was assessed for each colour pair using a 10-category scale ranging from “extremely harmonious” to “extremely disharmonious.” The experimental results showed a general pattern of two-colour harmony, from which a quantitative model was developed and principles for creating harmony were derived. This model was tested using an independent psychophysical data set and the results showed satisfactory performance for model prediction. The study also discusses critical issues including the definition of colour harmony, the relationship between harmony and pleasantness, and the relationship between harmony and order in colour. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 31, 191–204, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.20208
A pattern made by randomly filling cells in a square matrix was presented for 1 see and followed, after various intervals,
by an identical or similar pattern. Ss responded “same” or “different.” Performance was fast and accurate if the interval
was short and there was no movement or masking of the pattern during the interval. Performance was slower, less accurate,
and highly dependent on pattern complexity if the interval exceeded 100 msec or if there was movement or masking. The results
are interpreted as evidence for two distinct classes of visual memory: high-capacity sensory storage which is tied to spatial
position and is maskable and brief; and schematic short-term visual memory which is not tied to spatial position, which is
protected against masking, and which becomes less effective over the first few seconds but not over the first 600 msec.
Previous studies of preference for and harmony of color combinations have produced confusing results. For example, some claim that harmony increases with hue similarity, whereas others claim that it decreases. We argue that such confusions are resolved by distinguishing among three types of judgments about color pairs: (1) preference for the pair as a whole, (2) harmony of the pair as a whole, and (3) preference for its figural color when viewed against its colored background. Empirical support for this distinction shows that pair preference and harmony both increase as hue similarity increases, but preference relies more strongly on component color preference and lightness contrast. Although pairs with highly contrastive hues are generally judged to be neither preferable nor harmonious, figural color preference ratings increase as hue contrast with the background increases. The present results thus refine and clarify some of the best-known and most contentious claims of color theorists.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13414-010-0027-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Previous research measuring visual short-term memory (VSTM) suggests that the capacity for representing the layout of objects is fairly high. In four experiments, we further explored the capacity of VSTM for layout of objects, using the change detection method. In Experiment 1, participants retained most of the elements in displays of 4 to 8 elements. In Experiments 2 and 3, with up to 20 elements, participants retained many of them, reaching a capacity of 13.4 stimulus elements. In Experiment 4, participants retained much of a complex naturalistic scene. In most cases, increasing display size caused only modest reductions in performance, consistent with the idea of configural, variable-resolution grouping. The results indicate that participants can retain a substantial amount of scene layout information (objects and locations) in short-term memory. We propose that this is a case of remote visual understanding, where observers' ability to integrate information from a scene is paramount.
In verbal memory, similarity between items in memory often leads to interference and impaired memory performance. The present study sought to determine whether analogous interference effects would be observed in visual working memory by varying the similarity of the to-be-remembered objects in a color change-detection task. Instead of leading to interference and impaired performance, increased similarity among the items being held in memory led to improved performance. Moreover, when two similar colors were presented along with one dissimilar color, memory performance was better for the similar colors than for the dissimilar color. Similarity produced better performance even when the objects were presented sequentially and even when memory for the first item in the sequence was tested. These findings show that similarity does not lead to interference between representations in visual working memory. Instead, similarity may lead to improved task performance, possibly due to increased stability or precision of the memory representations during maintenance.
The perceptual recognition of objects is conceptualized to be a process in which the image of the input is segmented at regions of deep concavity into an arrangement of simple geometric components. The fundamental assumption of the proposed theory, recognition-by-components (RBC), is that a modest set of generalized-cone components, called geons, can be derived from contrasts of five readily detectable properties of edges in a two-dimensional image. The detection of these properties is generally invariant over viewing position and image quality and consequently allows robust object perception when the image is projected from a novel viewpoint or is degraded. RBC thus provides a principled account of the heretofore undecided relation between the classic principles of perceptual organization and pattern recognition. The results from experiments on the perception of briefly presented pictures by human observers provide empirical support for the theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Short-term memory for conceptual information is largely missing from current models of short-term memory. Several phenomena are discussed that give evidence for very brief conceptual representations of stimuli. Although these fleeting representations do not surface readily with many of the standard methods for studying and testing short-term memory, I argue that they are fundamental to cognitive processing and to the form that long-term memory takes.
The authors examined the organization of visual short-term memory (VSTM). Using a change-detection task, they reported that VSTM stores relational information between individual items. This relational processing is mediated by the organization of items into spatial configurations. The spatial configuration of visual objects is important for VSTM of spatial locations, colors, and shapes. When color VSTM is compared with location VSTM, spatial configuration plays an integral role because configuration is important for color VSTM, whereas color is not important for location VSTM. The authors also examined the role of attention and found that the formation of configuration is modulated by both top-down and bottom-up attentional factors. In summary, the authors proposed that VSTM stores the relational information of individual visual items on the basis of global spatial configuration.
Working memory can be divided into separate subsystems for verbal and visual information. Although the verbal system has been well characterized, the storage capacity of visual working memory has not yet been established for simple features or for conjunctions of features. The authors demonstrate that it is possible to retain information about only 3-4 colors or orientations in visual working memory at one time. Observers are also able to retain both the color and the orientation of 3-4 objects, indicating that visual working memory stores integrated objects rather than individual features. Indeed, objects defined by a conjunction of four features can be retained in working memory just as well as single-feature objects, allowing many individual features to be retained when distributed across a small number of objects. Thus, the capacity of visual working memory must be understood in terms of integrated objects rather than individual features.
A variety of researches are examined from the standpoint of information theory. It is shown that the unaided observer is severely limited in terms of the amount of information he can receive, process, and remember. However, it is shown that by the use of various techniques, e.g., use of several stimulus dimensions, recoding, and various mnemonic devices, this informational bottleneck can be broken. 20 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Limits on the storage capacity of working memory significantly affect cognitive abilities in a wide range of domains, but the nature of these capacity limits has been elusive. Some researchers have proposed that working memory stores a limited set of discrete, fixed-resolution representations, whereas others have proposed that working memory consists of a pool of resources that can be allocated flexibly to provide either a small number of high-resolution representations or a large number of low-resolution representations. Here we resolve this controversy by providing independent measures of capacity and resolution. We show that, when presented with more than a few simple objects, human observers store a high-resolution representation of a subset of the objects and retain no information about the others. Memory resolution varied over a narrow range that cannot be explained in terms of a general resource pool but can be well explained by a small set of discrete, fixed-resolution representations.
This chapter discusses visual short-term memory (VSTM) system. It compares VSTM system with visual long-term memory system. It then discusses the measurement of VSTM, the storage capacity of VSTM, the reasons why VSTM capacity is limited, the nature of VSTM representations, VSTM processes, and the functions of the VSTM process. © 2008 by Steven J. Luck and Andrew Hollingworth. All rights reserved.
In this study we investigated how the shapes and colors of lines influenced both preference and harmony ratings. We used two types of lines, irregularly jagged and smoothly curved, which were each presented in isolation as well as in side-by-side pairs: both jagged, both curved, and jagged + curved. Colors included eight saturated hues (unique-red, orange, unique-yellow, chartreuse, unique-green, cyan, unique-blue, and purple). Single lines appeared in each of the eight colors. Pairs of lines appeared in one of three color relationships: same hue (identity), adjacent hues (analogous), or opposite hues (complementary). Preference ratings were later obtained from the same participants for the eight individual colors presented as squares in isolation. Harmony ratings were strongly influenced by both line type and color relationship. Single curved lines were judged more harmonious than single jagged lines, curved pairs were more harmonious than jagged pairs, and pairs with different lines types were judged least harmonious. For all line pair types, harmony ratings increased as a function of hue similarity, consistent with Schloss and Palmer's (VSS-07) findings that color harmony is largely driven by hue similarity. In contrast, average preference ratings were only affected by line type: curved single lines were preferred to jagged single lines, and pairs containing same-shaped lines (both curved or both jagged ) were preferred to pairs that contained one line of each type. A regression model predicted 55% of the variance in preference ratings with two predictors: harmony ratings of the corresponding displays and average preference for the line colors in the display.
Citation
PARRY MOON and DOMINA EBERLE SPENCER, "Aesthetic Measure Applied to Color Harmony," J. Opt. Soc. Am. 34, 234-242 (1944)
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/josa/abstract.cfm?URI=josa-34-4-234
VSTML has a high capacity.¹ We further document its capacity while testing for object-based constraints on capacity. Sample displays had 36 possible element locations (18 filled), followed by a 1 sec interval, and then a test display in which one element moved (a sample element offset and a new test element onset). Capacity was measured with Cowan's K (most conservative, reported here), Pashler's K, and a new K2 to be presented, adapted for the dual events of location-change. Is VSTML capacity fixed by object? In Experiment 1, capacity was reliably higher for displays of one big, 36-location object (K=11.1 elements; 11.1 per object) than for displays of 3 12-location objects (K = 9.8, or 3.3 per object). Clearly, capacity was not fixed by object. Are object representations independent from each other? If so, then capacity could depend on internal object structure but not on relations between objects. Displays were 3 12-location objects. In Experiment 2, element size was constant throughout a display or varied between objects in a display. Variation disrupted symmetry and alignment between objects, and caused capacity to be reduced reliably. In Experiment 3, element shape was constant or varied between objects; variation reduced symmetry, but did not reduce capacity. In Experiments 4 and 5 we also varied elements within object; internal object variation of size and shape reduced capacity more than between-object variation. K ranged from 10.8 to 6.4 elements in these experiments. Object-based models are supported by the greater importance of within-object relative to between-object relations (Experiments 4 and 5) but wounded by flexibility of capacity (Experiment 1) and effects of size relations that span separate objects (Experiment 2).
Previous research on preference for color combinations investigated pairs of colors (Schloss & Palmer, VSS-07; Ou & Luo, 2006). The current project investigated preference for combinations of three colors in varying proportions. The full set of 37 colors included eight hues (red, orange, yellow, chartreuse, green, cyan, blue and purple) at four saturation/lightness cuts through color space (high-saturation, medium-saturation, light, and dark), as well as five grays. In Experiment 1, displays were 45·-rotated checkerboards whose two colors were always adjacent high-saturation hues. When a third color of any of the remaining six hues was present, it formed squares of three different sizes (large, medium, small) at the intersections of the checkerboard. There were also control displays with no checkerboard. Observers rated their preferences for each display. Later they also rated their preferences for the individual colors in isolation. The results showed that displays containing no third color were most preferred, and preference decreased as the area of the third color increased (p [[lt]].05). When the third color was present, the display was most preferred when the third color was closest in hue to the other two colors, consistent with prior studies of color harmony (Schloss & Palmer, VSS-07). A regression model accounted for 62% of the variance with the following predictors: size of the third color square, average preference for the two individual checkerboard colors, distance in hue between the third color and the checkerboard colors, and redness/greenness of the checkerboard colors. Further experiments examined cases in which adding the third color increased the harmony of the two-color combination, and in which combinations of colors in other cuts of the color space were investigated.
Psychological research on perceptual organization is reviewed, and a theoretical framework is presented to account for it. The review focusses on the organizational phenomena of shape constancy, motion perception, figural goodness, perceptual grouping, and reference frame effects. It is argued that the key to understanding them within a unified framework lies in the concept of local invariance over the group of Euclidean similarity transformations. The theory offered to account for these phenomena is based on a parallel processing system constructed from many spatial analyzers that are related to each other by similarity transformations. They are compared for output equivalence by invariance analyzers and structured more globally by frame analyzers. The latter are used to select the maximally informative (i.e., simplest) organization of sensory data for further processing and shape description.
According to a two-step account of the mere-exposure effect, repeated exposure leads to the subjective feeling of perceptual fluency, which in turn influences liking. If so, perceptual fluency manipulated by means other than repetition should influence liking. In three experiments, effects of perceptual fluency on affective judgments were examined. In Experiment 1, higher perceptual fluency was achieved by presenting a matching rather than nonmatching prime before showing a target picture. Participants judged targets as prettier if preceded by a matching rather than nonmatching prime. In Experi- ment 2, perceptual fluency was manipulated by figure-ground contrast. Stimuli were judged as more pretty, and less ugly, the higher the con- trast. In Experiment 3, perceptual fluency was manipulated by presen- tation duration. Stimuli shown for a longer duration were liked more, and disliked less. We conclude (a) that perceptual fluency increases liking and (b) that the experience of fluency is affectively positive, and hence attributed to positive but not to negative features, as reflected in a differential impact on positive and negative judgments. 0
This chapter provides a broad overview of some current theoretical arguments regarding working memory, focusing particularly on visuospatial cognition. It also illustrates how a multiple-component working memory model is particularly fruitful in the study of visual short-term memory function as well as in a range of mental visual imagery tasks performed by healthy adults and by brain damaged individuals with impairments of visuospatial cognition. Working memory is more complex than verbal short-term memory but helps cognitive psychologists to understand important aspects of everyday cognition as well as account for a range of phenomena observed in the laboratory. Working memory refers to the means by which human beings maintain, manipulate, and reinterpret, on a moment to moment basis, information that is required for successful performance of a range of everyday tasks from mental arithmetic. This memory appears to play important roles in acquiring new knowledge and in some aspects of retrieving previously acquired knowledge. It deals with the manipulation and the temporary storage of information and handles memory for appearance, object location, and movement sequences, as well as words, letters, and numbers. This mental workspace comprises elements responsible for temporary storage as well as for manipulation, allowing for memory functions but also allowing for the process of mental discovery and the generation of new knowledge from old.
Detection of change when one display of familiar objects replaces another display might be based purely upon visual codes,
or also on identity information (i.e., knowingwhat was presentwhere in the initial display). Displays of 10 alphanumeric characters were presented and, after a brief offset, were presented
again in the same position, with or without a change in a single character. Subjects’ accuracy in change detection did not
suggest preservation of any more information than is usually available in whole report, except with the briefest of offsets
(under 50 msec). Stimulus duration had only modest effects. The interaction of masking with offset duration followed the pattern
previously observed with unfamiliar visual stimuli (Phillips, 1974). Accuracy was not reduced by reflection of the characters
about a horizontal axis, suggesting that categorical information contributed negligibly. Detection of change appears to depend
upon capacity-limited visual memory; (putative) knowledge of what identities are present in different display locations does
not seem to contribute.
Efficient visually guided behavior depends on the ability to form, retain, and compare visual representations for objects that may be separated in space and time. This ability relies on a short-term form of memory known as visual working memory. Although a considerable body of research has begun to shed light on the neurocognitive systems subserving this form of memory, few theories have addressed these processes in an integrated, neurally plausible framework. We describe a layered neural architecture that implements encoding and maintenance, and links these processes to a plausible comparison process. In addition, the model makes the novel prediction that change detection will be enhanced when metrically similar features are remembered. Results from experiments probing memory for color and for orientation were consistent with this novel prediction. These findings place strong constraints on models addressing the nature of visual working memory and its underlying mechanisms.
All colors can be described in terms of four non-reducible 'unique' hues: red, green, yellow, and blue [1]. These four hues are also the most common 'focal' colors - the best examples of color terms in language [2]. The significance of the unique hues has been recognized since at least the 14(th) century [3] and is universal [4,5], although there is some individual variation [6,7]. Psychophysical linking hypotheses predict an explicit neural representation of unique hues at some stage of the visual system, but no such representation has been described [8]. The special status of the unique hues "remains one of the central mysteries of color science"[9]. Here we report that a population of recently identified cells in posterior inferior temporal cortex of macaque monkey contains an explicit representation of unique hues.
Previous research has suggested that visual short-term memory has a fixed capacity of about four objects. However, we found that capacity varied substantially across the five stimulus classes we examined, ranging from 1.6 for shaded cubes to 4.4 for colors (estimated using a change detection task). We also estimated the information load per item in each class, using visual search rate. The changes we measured in memory capacity across classes were almost exactly mirrored by changes in the opposite direction in visual search rate (r2=.992 between search rate and the reciprocal of memory capacity). The greater the information load of each item in a stimulus class (as indicated by a slower search rate), the fewer items from that class one can hold in memory. Extrapolating this linear relationship reveals that there is also an upper bound on capacity of approximately four or five objects. Thus, both the visual information load and number of objects impose capacity limits on visual short-term memory.
Imaging studies are consistent with the existence of brain regions specialized for color, but electrophysiological studies have produced conflicting results. Here we address the neural basis for color, using targeted single-unit recording in alert macaque monkeys, guided by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the same subjects. Distributed within posterior inferior temporal cortex, a large region encompassing V4, PITd, and posterior TEO that some have proposed functions as a single visual complex, we found color-biased fMRI hotspots that we call "globs," each several millimeters wide. Almost all cells located in globs showed strong luminance-invariant color tuning and some shape selectivity. Cells in different globs represented distinct visual field locations, consistent with the coarse retinotopy of this brain region. Cells in "interglob" regions were not color tuned, but were more strongly shape selective. Neither population was direction selective. These results suggest that color perception is mediated by specialized neurons that are clustered within the extrastriate brain.
Color matching and color discrimination'', in The Science of Color second edition
- V C Smith
- Pokorny
Smith V C, Pokorny J, 2003 Color matching and color discrimination'', in The Science of Color second edition, Ed. S K Shevell (Oxford: Elsevier) pp 103 ^ 148
High capacity visual short term memory for layout'' paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the How high is visual short term memory capacity for layout?'' Attention
- T Sanocki
- E Sellers
- Mittelstadt
- T Sanocki
- E Sellers
- J Mittelstadt
- Sulman
Sanocki T, Sellers E, Mittelstadt J, 2001 High capacity visual short term memory for layout'' paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society Orlando, FL (November) Sanocki T, Sellers E, Mittelstadt J, Sulman N, 2010 How high is visual short term memory capacity for layout?'' Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 72 1097 ^ 1109
Attraction affiliation and attachment
- R Zajonc
Zajonc R B, 1971 Attraction affiliation and attachment'', in Man and Beast: Comparative Social Behavior Eds J E Eisenberg, W S Dillon (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press) pp 141 ^ 179
Cherries among the leaves'', in Color Perception: Philosophical, Psychological, Artistic, and Computational Perspectives
- J D Mollon
Mollon J D, 2000 Cherries among the leaves'', in Color Perception: Philosophical, Psychological, Artistic, and Computational Perspectives Ed. S Davis (New York: Oxford University Press) pp 10 ^ 30
The psychology of perceptual organization: A transformational approach'', in Human and Machine Vision Familiarity and visual change detection
- Palmer
- Beck
- Hope
Palmer S E, 1983 The psychology of perceptual organization: A transformational approach'', in Human and Machine Vision Eds J Beck, B Hope, A Rosenfeld (New York: Academic Press) Pashler H, 1988 Familiarity and visual change detection'' Perception & Psychophysics 44 369 ^ 378
MA: Rockport Publishers) Color relations increase the capacity of visual short-term memory Specialized color modules in macaque extrastriate cortex
- Chijiiwa H Conway
- B R S Moeller
- D Tsao
Chijiiwa H, 1987 Color Harmony (Rockport, MA: Rockport Publishers) Color relations increase the capacity of visual short-term memory Conway B R, Moeller S, Tsao D Y, 2007 Specialized color modules in macaque extrastriate cortex'' Neuron 56 560 ^ 573
The capacity of visual short-term memory is set both by visual information load and by number of objects'' Psychological Science 15 106 ^ 111 Arnheim R, 1974 Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
- G Alvarez
- Cavanagh
Alvarez G, Cavanagh P, 2004 The capacity of visual short-term memory is set both by visual information load and by number of objects'' Psychological Science 15 106 ^ 111 Arnheim R, 1974 Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press) Baddeley A D, Hitch G J, 1974 Working memory'', in The Psychology of Learning and Motiva-tion Ed. G H Bower (New York: Academic Press) pp 47 ^ 89
Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors and Their Applications to the Arts Based on the first English edition of 1854 as translated from the
- M E Chevreul
Chevreul M E, 1839/1987 Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors and Their Applications to the Arts (West Chester, PA: West Schiffer Publishing). Based on the first English edition of 1854 as translated from the first French edition, 1839
High capacity visual short term memory for layout” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the
- T Sanocki
- E Sellers
- J Mittelstadt