Working memory

Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily. It is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term memory, but some theorists consider the two forms of memory distinct, assuming that working memory allows for the manipulation of stored information, whereas short-term memory only refers to the short-term storage of information. Working memory is a theoretical concept central to cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and neuroscience. History The term "working memory" was coined by Miller, Galanter, and Pribram, and was used in the 1960s in the context of theories that likened the mind to a computer. In 1968, Atkinson and Shiffrin used the term to describe their "short-term store". The term short-term store was the name previously used for working memory. Other suggested names were short-term memory, prima

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (51)

Related publications

Related people (2)

Related people

Related units (5)

Related units

Related concepts (42)

Related concepts

Related courses (8)

Related courses

Related lectures (13)

Related lectures

CS-411: Digital education

This course addresses the relationship between specific technological features and the learners' cognitive processes. It also covers the methods and results of empirical studies on this topic: do student actually learn due to technologies?

BIO-311: Neuroscience

The course starts with fundamentals of electrical - and chemical signaling in neurons. Students then learn how neurons in the brain receive and process sensory information, and how other neurons control the behavior of an animal. Furthermore, memory, learning, and brain disorders will be introduced.

CS-119(c): Information, Computation, Communication

L'objectif de ce cours est d'introduire les étudiants à la pensée algorithmique, de les familiariser avec les fondamentaux de l'Informatique et de développer une première compétence en programmation (langage C++).

Memory

Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future ac

Prefrontal cortex

In mammalian brain anatomy, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) covers the front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. The PFC contains the Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA11, BA12, BA13, BA14,

Hippocampus

The hippocampus (via Latin from Greek ἱππόκαμπος, 'seahorse') is a major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in each side of the

Obligatory averaging in mean size perception

Aire Raidvee

The perception of ensemble characteristics is often regarded as an antidote to an established bottleneck in focused attention and working memory, both of which appear to be limited in capacity to a few objects only. In order to test the associative law of summation, observers were asked to estimate the mean size of four circles relative to a reference circle. When there was no time to scrutinize each individual circle, observers discriminated the mean size difference identically, irrespective of whether the same summary size increment or decrement was added to or subtracted from the size of only one, two, or all four circles. Since observers judged the size of individual circles, the position of which was indicated after they were displayed, considerably less accurately than the mean size of the four circles, it is very unlikely that explicit knowledge of the size of the individual elements is the basis of mean size judgments. The sizes of individual elements were pooled together in an obligatory manner before size information had reached awareness. The processing of size information seems to be largely constrained to only one measure at a time, with a preference for mean size rather than the individual measures from which it is assembled. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Elsevier2014

Effects of item distinctiveness on the retrieval of objects and object-location bindings from visual working memory

Yury Markov

Visual working memory (VWM) is prone to interference from stored items competing for its limited capacity. Distinctiveness or similarity of the items is acknowledged to affect this competition, such that poor item distinctiveness causes a failure to discriminate between items sharing common features. In three experiments, we studied how the distinctiveness of studied real-world objects (i.e., whether the objects belong to the same or different basic categories) affects the retrieval of objects themselves (simple recognition) and object-location conjunctions (information about which object was where in a display, cued recall). In Experiments 1 and 2, we found that distinctiveness did not affect memories for objects or for locations, but lowdistinctive objects were more frequently reported at “swapped” locations that originally contained other objects, showing objectlocation memory swaps. In Experiments 3 we found that observers swapped the location of a tested object with another object from the same category more frequently than with any of the objects from another category. This suggests that more similar studied objects cause more retrieval competition in object-location judgments than in simple recognition. Additionally, we discuss a possible role of categorical labeling of locations that can support object-location retrieval when the studied objects are highly distinct.

2022

Serial dependence under memory load

Gizay Ceylan, Michael Herzog, Yury Markov, Ayberk Ozkirli, David Pascucci, Natalia Tiurina

Perceptual decisions are biased towards previous stimuli, a phenomenon known as serial dependence. However, the mechanisms of this bias are unknown. For example, it is debated whether serial dependence reflects a perceptual bias or interference of prior stimuli in working memory. We addressed this question by testing whether visual working memory load modulates serial dependence. We presented sequences of Gabors appearing at the same or different locations. At the beginning of each sequence, we presented a display with two lines. Participants reproduced the orientation of each of the three Gabors while holding the orientation of the lines in memory. In a control condition, participants reproduced only the orientation of each Gabor, ignoring the lines. Working memory load caused a repulsive bias in the adjustment responses when the previous Gabor was presented at a different location. In the control condition, Gabors at different locations caused no bias at all. When presented at the same location, however, the bias was attractive for small orientation differences (45°), resembling typical serial dependence. Under load, this pattern was qualitatively more pronounced. Our results suggest that working memory load may interact with, rather than prevent, serial dependence by making perceptual decisions more vulnerable to biases. [This research was supported by funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 415 PZ00P1_179988 to DP) and the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship awarded by Federal Commission for Scholarships for Foreign Students FCS (NT). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis.]

SAGE Publishing2021