Fidelity Of Biological Motion In Working Memory

Biological motion(BM)refers to the meaningful movements of animate agents.In the recent decade researchers have explored the mechanisms of retaining BM in working memory(WM),focusing on the capacity(quantity)of the BM-related information.However,the quantity and the quality(or fidelity)of the stored representations are two distinct aspects of WM.So far,no study explored the quality of BM representations in WM.The current study attempted to close this gap,by investigating how memory load of BM(Experiments 1-2)and negative affective state(Experiment 3)influence the fidelity of BM representations in WM.To measure the fidelity of BM in WM,we used a recall paradigm,in which the participants were required to recall the moving degree of the corresponding BM from the memory array by modulating the moving degree with a computer mouse.Experiments 1 and 2 required participants to memorize 1,2,3,and 6 BM displays with distinct moving degree.We consistently found that the fidelity of BM dropped with the increase of memory load regardless of the WM capacity of BM,and this pattern was not modulated by the exposure time of the memory array.These results support a resource theory of keeping representations in WM.Basing on the results of Experiments 1 and 2,we further examined how the negative affective state influence BM fidelity in WM(Experiment 3).The participants were first induced a negative or neutral affective state(as a between-subjects variable),and then finished the BM fidelity task.We found that the negative affective state did not modulate the fidelity of BM in WM.The following conclusions were reached:(1)WM load of BM regulates the fidelity of BM representation in WM.The more BM stored in BM,the worse the fidelity of BM in WM.(2)Negative affective state has no influence on the fidelity of BM in WM.