Effects Of Features And Attention Resources On Visual Working Memory Consolidation Capacity

Visual working memory(VWM)consolidation refers to the process of transforming a fleeting sensory representation into a relatively durable VWM representation which could be maintained briefly.It plays an important role in processing of visual information.In recent years,researchers have begun to turn the research focus from the time course to the processing pattern of VWM consolidation.They have found that consolidation pattern depends on the number of items which could be consolidated at the same time and it also could be affected by the allocation of attention resources caused by spatial distance.However,the simultaneous-sequential paradigm used in previous studies might be interfered with by some extraneous variables,such as the location or the order of stimulus presentation,resulting in the current results are in doubt.Thus,this study uses a new indicator to infer the consolidation pattern by measuring the consolidation capacity,and then resolve existing controversies with color information and orientation information as stimulus materials.At the same time,it continues to explore the impact of attention resources allocation caused by attention scope on the VWM consolidation capacity.Finally,it discusses the role of consolidation resource in the consolidation pattern.The first part of this study used contralateral delay activity(CDA),an electrophysiological marker to measure the capacity of consolidation for color and orientation information by the masked change detection task.As a result,it was found that different stimulus features had different capacity limits in the process of consolidating,which suggested the consolidation process followed different processing patterns.The consolidation of color is a limited-capacity parallel process and the capacity of consolidation is 2 items.However,the process of consolidating orientation is a strictly serial process,which could process 1 item at a time.The second part used different concentric circles which could divide the attention area to examine whether the size of attention scope could affect the sensory processing or the capacity of VWM consolidation for color by simultaneous-sequential paradigm.The results excluded the effect of attention scope on the perceptual process and found that attention resources allocation caused by attention scope could affect the probability of VWM consolidation,but it did not change the capacity of consolidation.Finally,this study speculates that the allocation of consolidation resources on each item would affect the consolidation pattern and the number of items which could be consolidated at the same time.