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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 16, 2025

A Within-Subject Experimental Design using an Object Location Task in Rats

A Within-Subject Experimental Design using an Object Location Task in Rats

Published on: May 6, 2021

Object-based encoding constrains storage in visual working memory.

William X Q Ngiam¹, Krystian B Loetscher¹, Edward Awh¹

¹Department of Psychology, University of Chicago.

Journal of Experimental Psychology. General

|September 11, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Visual working memory capacity is limited by the number of objects, not features. This study shows object-based limits for visual working memory storage.

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Last Updated: Jul 16, 2025

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Published on: January 23, 2017

Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience
Visual Perception

Background:

The fundamental unit of visual working memory (WM) remains a subject of debate.
WM capacity may be constrained by the number of distinct objects or the total number of stored feature values.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether object-based or feature-based models better explain the encoding of multi-feature objects in visual WM.
To determine the capacity limits when storing objects with multiple features (color/orientation, color/shape).

Main Methods:

Four experiments employed a whole-report task.
Participants reported both features from a six-item array of multi-feature objects.
Analysis focused on recall performance for single- and multi-featured items.

Main Results:

Above-chance recall for both single- and multi-featured objects was limited to the first three or four responses.
Later responses were best explained as random guesses.
Recall patterns indicated a distribution of features across objects.

Conclusions:

The findings support an object-based limitation on visual working memory capacity.
Visual working memory capacity is constrained by the number of individuated objects, not the total number of features stored.