Feature-based versus object-based representation in visual working memory.

Abstract

Visual working memory (WM) can hold a limited amount of information for a short interval. The current study investigated whether the features of the objects maintained in WM are represented in a dependent or independent manner. Across five experiments, we presented multifeature objects (color and shape) and investigated whether remembering one feature is correlated with remembering the other feature. To answer this question, we divided the continuous response distribution into five quintiles according to the accuracy performance, then computed the area under the curve of the continuous response of the other feature, thus calculating the area under the curve for a given feature for each quintile of the other feature. A dependent object representation predicts a correlation between these measures, indicating that remembering one feature is correlated with remembering the other feature. In all five experiments, in which we used different stimuli (triangles or polygons), different memory exposure intervals (1,200 or 300 ms), and different response procedures (sequential or simultaneous responses), we found strong evidence for a dependency between the object's features. We conclude that this current analysis was able to reveal strong feature dependency in WM. These findings support the conclusion that visual WM relies on object-based representations and that all the objects' features are represented in a dependent manner. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).