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Related Concept Videos

Working Memory01:24

Working Memory

411
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...
411

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No effect of monetary reward in a visual working memory task.

Ronald van den Berg1, Qijia Zou2, Yuhang Li3

  • 1Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.

Plos One
|January 17, 2023
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Monetary incentives do not improve visual working memory (VWM) performance. This study found that neither group bonuses nor trial-by-trial rewards enhanced participants' ability to retain visual information, suggesting VWM capacity is reward-insensitive.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Human Behavior

Background:

  • Human visual working memory (VWM) resources are flexibly allocated based on item importance.
  • A key question is whether individuals can control the total VWM resource pool for a task.
  • Previous research has not extensively explored the impact of incentives on overall VWM capacity.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if increasing monetary incentives enhance overall visual working memory performance.
  • To determine if reward magnitude influences the allocation of VWM resources.
  • To test the sensitivity of VWM encoding quality to monetary reward.

Main Methods:

  • Three experiments were conducted using a delayed-estimation task on the Amazon Turk platform.
  • Experiments 1 & 2: Participants were assigned to groups receiving varying bonus payments ($0-$10).
  • Experiment 3: Reward was manipulated on a trial-by-trial basis within subjects.

Main Results:

  • No significant effect of bonus amount on intrinsic motivation or VWM performance was observed in Experiments 1 & 2.
  • Experiment 3 also yielded no evidence that VWM performance varied with potential reward magnitude.
  • These findings indicate that VWM performance is not enhanced by monetary incentives.

Conclusions:

  • Encoding quality in visual working memory appears to be insensitive to monetary reward.
  • The results challenge resource-rational theories of VWM that predict reward-modulated resource allocation.
  • Further research may be needed to explore other factors influencing VWM capacity and resource allocation.