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Differential trajectories of memory quality and guessing across sequential reports from working memory
Benjamin Peters1,2, Benjamin Rahm3, Jochen Kaiser1
1Institute of Medical Psychology, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Journal of Vision
|July 10, 2019
Summary
Working memory stores information in two states, differing in quality, not quantity. This study reveals a sharp decline in memory quality between the first and second recalled items.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Working memory (WM) holds limited information briefly.
- Prior research suggests WM stores items in distinct states with varying capacities.
- The nature of these capacity limitations (quantity vs. quality) remains debated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether WM state differences are due to storage quantity or quality.
- To differentiate between item capacity and memory fidelity in WM.
Main Methods:
- A sequential whole-report procedure was used with Gabor patches.
- Participants reported orientations of 2 or 4 items and rated memory confidence.
- A mixture model analyzed precision, guessing, and misreport across sequential reports over 600 trials per condition.
Main Results:
- Memory quality measures showed a steep drop from the first to the second item, then slight decreases.
- Guessing rates (reported and modeled) changed continuously across reports.
- Discontinuous changes in memory quality, not quantity, distinguished WM states.
Conclusions:
- Findings support a two-state model of working memory.
- These states are differentiated by the quality of information stored, not the number of items.
- Memory quality degrades rapidly after the first item, suggesting a quality-based limitation.
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