The rise and fall of memories: Temporal dynamics of visual working memory

• DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/sgycr
• Publication Date: 2024-05-01T13:29:02Z
• Authors: Andre Sahakian; Surya Gayet; Chris Paffen; Stefan van der St...
• Keywords: Dynamics

Visual working memory (VWM) is a cognitive system, which temporarily stores task-relevant visual information to enable interactions with the environment. In everyday VWM use, we typically decide how long look encode information, and wait before acting on memory. contrast, studied in unnaturally rigid paradigms that keep presentation times delays fixed. Here, ask memories build up over self-paced viewing times, they decay delays, task naturally engages VWM. We employed copying task, participants were tasked recreate an “example” arrangement of items adjacent empty “workspace”. tracked their unconstrained behavior at level individual items' time successful placements (i.e., delay). Our results show performance monotonically increased for one second (per item), plateaued afterwards. Interestingly, while views exceeding did not strongly improve short (two second) beyond longer delays. this pattern was observed Experiments 2A 2B, where delay experimentally manipulated more typical, paradigms). These findings showcase importance considering aspects naturalistic behavior, like decision making, when studying suggest situations, glances are sufficient immediate use from VWM, but required effective delayed use.