Is Categorization in Visual Working Memory a Way to Reduce Mental Effort? A Pupillometry Study

Autor/inn/en	Zhou, Cherie; Lorist, Monicque M.; Mathôt, Sebastiaan
Titel	Is Categorization in Visual Working Memory a Way to Reduce Mental Effort? A Pupillometry Study
Quelle	In: Cognitive Science, 46 (2022) 9, (15 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Zhou, Cherie) ORCID (Lorist, Monicque M.) ORCID (Mathôt, Sebastiaan)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0364-0213
DOI	10.1111/cogs.13194
Schlagwörter	Visual Perception; Short Term Memory; Classification; Motor Reactions; Physiology; Color + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Visuelle Wahrnehmung; Kurzzeitgedächtnis; Classification system; Klassifikation; Klassifikationssystem; Physiologie; Colour; Farbbezeichnung; Farbe
Abstract	Recent studies on visual working memory (VWM) have shown that visual information can be stored in VWM as continuous (e.g., a specific shade of red) as well as categorical representations (e.g., the general category red). It has been widely assumed, yet never directly tested, that continuous representations require more VWM mental effort than categorical representations; given limited VWM capacity, this would mean that fewer continuous, as compared to categorical, representations can be maintained simultaneously. We tested this assumption by measuring pupil size, as a proxy for mental effort, in a delayed estimation task. Participants memorized one to four ambiguous (boundaries between adjacent color categories) or prototypical colors to encourage continuous or categorical representations, respectively; after a delay, a probe indicated the location of the to-be-reported color. We found that, for memory load 1, pupil size was larger while maintaining ambiguous as compared to prototypical colors, but without any difference in memory precision; this suggests that participants relied on an effortful continuous representation to maintain a single ambiguous color, thus resulting in pupil dilation while preserving precision. Strikingly, this effect gradually inverted, such that for memory load 4, pupil size was smaller while maintaining ambiguous and prototypical colors, but memory precision was now substantially reduced for ambiguous colors; this suggests that with increased memory load participants increasingly relied on categorical representations for ambiguous colors (which are by definition a poor fit to any category). Taken together, our results suggest that continuous representations are more effortful than categorical representations and that very few continuous representations (perhaps only one) can be maintained simultaneously. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01