The Effect Of Perceptual Information And Category Conceptual Information Of Real-world Objects On Storage Of Visual Working Memory

Visual working memory(VWM)is a limited dynamic memory system in which people temporarily store and process visual information(Baddeley & hitch,1974;Cowan,2008).Previous studies have explored the storage mechanism of simple objects in VWM(for example,luck & Vogel,1997;Wheeler & Treisman,2002;Zhang & luck,2008).These studies often used meaningless color blocks,lines,polygons and other simple objects as experimental materials to prevent the visual working memory from being interfered by other memory systems and irrelevant variables.Different from the simple objects in the laboratory environment,we often contact real-world objects in real life.Brady,Stürmer and Alvarez(2016)used real-world objects as experimental stimuli for the first time to explore the differences between simple objects and real objects in the storage mechanism of visual working memory.The results showed that the storage capacity of real-world objects was different from simple objects in VWM.Although this conclusion has not been repeatedly verified by subsequent studies(Li,Xiong,Theeuwes,& Wang,2020),these findings suggested that the storage mechanism of visual working memory of real-world objects needed to be further explored.Konkle,Brady,Alvarez,and Oliva(2010)provided a good idea for us to study the real-world objects in visual working memory storage.Konkle et al.(2010)used real-world objects as experimental material to explore these storage mechanism in long-term memory,and distinguished the real-world objects into the perceptual information dimension and conceptual dimension(specifically expressed as categories information for objects).The results showed that the conceptual information and perceptual information of real-world objects had different effects on visual long-termmemory storage.The distinctiveness of perceptual information of real-world object could not predict visual long-term memory capacity,but distinctiveness of categories conceptual information of real-world objects significantly could affect the storage of visual long-term memory.Konkle et al.(2010)research showed that real-world objects contained rich conceptual information and perceptual information,and these information will have different effects on long-term memory.So,what role of the real-world object’s conceptual information and perceptual information will play in the storage mechanism of visual working memory?In order to explore the above problems,the current study used the operational definition and experimental materials of Konkle et al.(2010),and divided the real-world objects into objects with similar conceptual information and dissimilar conceptual information(category information),perceptual similarity(color information and shape information)and perceptual dissimilarity,to explore the impact of real-world object’s categories conceptual characteristics and perceptual characteristics on visual working memory storage.In Experiment 1,the change detection paradigm was used to explore the storage mechanism of color information of real-world objects in visual working memory.The results showed that people’s visual working memory storage of real-world objects was affected by the color information of real-world objects.In Experiment 2,we adjusted the encoding time to further verify the results of Experiment 1,and the color effect of real-world objects was still stable.Experiment 3 explored the storage mechanism of shape information of real-world objects in visual working memory.The results showed that the storage of visual working memory of real-world objects depended on the shape information of real-world objects.Experiments 4 and 5 explored the storage mechanism of categories information of real-world objects in visual working memory.The results showed that people’s visual working memory storage for real-world objects might not be affected by categories information.To sum up,our study showed that the perceptual information of real-world objects would affect visual working memory storage but the conceptual information of real-world objects would not affect visual working memory storage in a sense.Thisconclusion may be limited by the operational definition of categories conceptual information of real-world objects in current experiments.The role of categories conceptual information of real-world objects in visual working memory remains to be further explored.