Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

Working Memory01:24

Working Memory

Working memory refers to a combination of components, including short-term memory and attention, that allow an individual to hold information temporarily as we perform cognitive tasks. It is an essential cognitive function that enables the execution of complex tasks such as problem-solving, comprehension, and reasoning. Unlike short-term memory, which simply involves the storage of information for a brief period, working memory involves the active manipulation and processing of this information.
Forgetting01:21

Forgetting

Forgetting is an intrinsic aspect of human memory, characterized by the gradual loss or inaccessibility of information over time. Hermann Ebbinghaus, a pioneering psychologist, extensively studied this phenomenon and formulated the forgetting curve. This curve illustrates that memory loss occurs rapidly immediately after learning and then decelerates over time. Several mechanisms contribute to forgetting, including encoding failure, storage decay, retrieval failure, and interference.
Encoding...
Visual Agnosia01:12

Visual Agnosia

Visual agnosia is a condition characterized by the inability to recognize visually presented objects despite having normal vision. For instance, a person with visual agnosia can describe the shape and color of an object but cannot identify or name it. This impairment does not affect their visual field, acuity, color vision, brightness discrimination, language, or memory. An example of this condition in a social setting is someone at a dinner party asking for "that silver thing with a round end"...
Role of Cerebellum and Prefrontal Cortex in Memory01:14

Role of Cerebellum and Prefrontal Cortex in Memory

The cerebellum, while traditionally associated with motor control, also plays a crucial role in memory, particularly in procedural memory, which involves learning motor tasks that become automatic through repetition. For example, studies have shown that when the cerebellum is damaged, individuals or animals lose the ability to learn conditioned motor responses, such as the conditioned eye-blink response in classical conditioning experiments with rabbits. This study demonstrates the cerebellum's...
Interference and Decay01:16

Interference and Decay

Forgetting is a complex cognitive phenomenon influenced by several factors, among which interference and decay are particularly prominent. These processes explain why individuals often struggle to retrieve specific information from memory, leading to lapses in recall that can be observed in everyday situations.
Interference occurs when competing memories hinder the retrieval of particular information. It can be classified into two types: proactive and retroactive interference. Proactive...
Higher Mental Functions of Brain: Learning and Memory01:26

Higher Mental Functions of Brain: Learning and Memory

Memory is one of the most vital higher mental functions of the brain. Memory is closely related to learning because it enables us to retain information and experiences from our past to use them in our present life. It also helps us to remember facts, events, and skills, such as riding a bike or swimming. There are two types of memory — declarative memory, which involves memorizing facts or events, and procedural memory, which enables us to remember how to do something like writing or playing an...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Visual memory.

Attention, perception & psychophysics·2026
Same author

Sensory Neural Noise as a Limiting Factor in Visual Working Memory Precision in Neurotypicals and Schizophrenia.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2025
Same author

Automaticity speeds the retrieval of instances from the human hippocampus.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2025
Same author

Capacity not required: A long-term memory model that exhibits key signatures of working memory.

Psychological review·2025
Same author

What is memorable across the Pacific Ocean shows evidence of prior learning on the memorability of new visual inputs.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2025
Same author

Executive control can query hidden human memories.

Journal of experimental psychology. General·2025
Same journal

Testing the predictions of a distinctiveness model of memory: The production effect in backward recall.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

On the impact of adjacency on transposed-word effects under serial presentation.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

It's time to opt out: Metacognitive analysis of time regulation under uncertainty.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

The role of statistical learning in attentional guidance during search through naturalistic scenes.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

Representing objects and features in long-term memory: A case for direct feature-feature binding.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

Crossmodal correspondences influence adaptation during rule-based category learning of objects.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
See all related articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 24, 2026

Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory
08:06

Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory

Published on: August 15, 2010

Directed forgetting and directed remembering in visual working memory.

Melonie Williams1, Geoffrey F Woodman

  • 1Department of Psychology, Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37240-7817, USA.

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition
|March 14, 2012
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Individuals can selectively focus on relevant information in visual working memory using cues. Remembering cued items improves performance more than forgetting cued items in visual working memory tasks.

More Related Videos

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets
08:45

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets

Published on: December 5, 2014

A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions
10:38

A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions

Published on: July 16, 2015

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: May 24, 2026

Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory
08:06

Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory

Published on: August 15, 2010

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets
08:45

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets

Published on: December 5, 2014

A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions
10:38

A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions

Published on: July 16, 2015

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Visual working memory (VWM) has a limited capacity, necessitating selective information maintenance.
  • Previous research on selective VWM maintenance yields mixed results regarding cue effectiveness.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether participants can selectively maintain or forget subsets of information in VWM using cues.
  • To clarify the effectiveness of directed-forgetting cues in VWM and explore underlying neural mechanisms.

Main Methods:

  • Behavioral experiments using change-detection tasks with cued subsets of visual stimuli.
  • Analysis of event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify electrophysiological correlates of selective maintenance.

Main Results:

  • Both 'remember' and 'forget' cues improved VWM performance, with 'remember' cues yielding greater benefits.
  • Invalid cues in previous studies may explain the ineffectiveness of directed-forgetting.
  • ERPs confirmed that cues elicit focused maintenance of relevant VWM information.

Conclusions:

  • Cues can effectively direct attention to specific items within VWM, enhancing selective maintenance.
  • The ability to prioritize information in VWM is crucial for optimizing cognitive performance.
  • This study provides behavioral and neurophysiological evidence for cue-directed VWM focus.