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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 1, 2025

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects

Published on: November 30, 2018

Semantic knowledge influences visual working memory in adults and children.

Ariel Starr¹, Mahesh Srinivasan², Silvia A Bunge²

¹Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America.

|November 11, 2020

Summary

Semantic knowledge enhances visual working memory capacity for familiar objects in adults and children. This suggests memory capacity is flexible, not fixed, depending on the information

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience
Human Perception

Background:

Visual working memory (VWM) capacity is limited.
VWM capacity is greater for real-world objects than abstract stimuli.
Semantic knowledge may explain this VWM benefit for real-world objects.

Purpose of the Study:

Directly test if semantic knowledge benefits VWM.
Investigate the role of familiarity in VWM for real-world objects.
Examine VWM capacity in adults and children (4-9 years).

Main Methods:

Used familiar and unfamiliar real-world objects in VWM tasks.
Employed control conditions to rule out alternative explanations.
Assessed memory performance in different age groups.

Main Results:

A mnemonic benefit was observed for familiar objects.
This benefit was present in both adults and children.
Alternative explanations (labeling, visual features) were excluded.

Conclusions:

Semantic knowledge significantly influences VWM capacity.
Familiarity, driven by semantic knowledge, enhances memory retention.
VWM capacity is dynamic and context-dependent, not a fixed limit.