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Familiarity enhances mnemonic precision but impairs mnemonic accuracy in visual working memory
Bo-Yeong Won1,2, Hyung-Bum Park3, Weiwei Zhang3
1Department of Psychology, University of Riverside, 900 University Ave, Riverside, CA, 92521, USA. bywon@csuchico.edu.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|February 17, 2023
Summary
Prior stimulus familiarity sharpens visual working memory precision but biases accuracy toward familiar faces. This research explains celebrity sighting phenomena by examining mnemonic representation and bias.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Prior stimulus familiarity influences visual working memory (VWM) representations.
- The interaction between familiarity and veridical mnemonic correspondence remains unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how familiarity affects precision and accuracy in VWM.
- To model mnemonic correspondence using a hierarchical Bayesian approach.
Main Methods:
- A change detection task using morphed celebrity and non-celebrity faces.
- Hierarchical Bayesian modeling to analyze task performance.
Main Results:
- Familiarity enhances VWM precision by sharpening mnemonic representations.
- Familiarity impairs VWM accuracy by biasing representations toward familiar (celebrity) faces.
Conclusions:
- Familiarity has dissociable effects on mnemonic precision and bias.
- Findings offer an integrated explanation for celebrity sighting phenomena.
- Emphasizes assessing both precision and bias in VWM research.
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