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Methods for Presenting Real-world Objects Under Controlled Laboratory Conditions
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Contributions from Long-Term Memory Explain Superior Visual Working Memory Performance with Meaningful Objects.

Hyung-Bum Park1,2,3, Edward Awh4,2

  • 1Institute for Mind and Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637 moonphb@gmail.com.

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
|January 9, 2026
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Meaningful objects do not expand working memory (WM) capacity. When proactive interference is controlled, the memory advantage for objects disappears, indicating that WM limits are similar for simple and meaningful stimuli.

Keywords:
contralateral delay activitylong-term memorymeaningful objectsproactive interferenceworking memory capacity

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Psychology
  • Memory Research

Background:

  • Previous research suggested meaningful objects enhance working memory (WM) capacity due to richer semantic representations.
  • However, these studies often confounded meaningfulness with proactive interference (PI), potentially inflating performance for meaningful items.
  • This raises questions about whether WM capacity is truly expandable or if other memory processes are involved.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether meaningful objects genuinely increase WM capacity or if the perceived advantage stems from reduced PI and enhanced long-term memory (LTM) contributions.
  • To differentiate between familiarity and recollection contributions to memory performance for meaningful versus simple stimuli.
  • To assess neural markers of WM storage to determine if capacity differs between stimulus types.

Main Methods:

  • Experiment 1: Behavioral WM tasks comparing repeated colors, repeated meaningful objects, and trial-unique meaningful objects, with PI equated across conditions.
  • Experiment 1 Analysis: Hierarchical Bayesian dual-process modeling to assess familiarity and recollection.
  • Experiment 2: Electrophysiological recording using contralateral delay activity (CDA) to measure WM storage during tasks with varying set sizes for trial-unique meaningful objects and repeated colors.

Main Results:

  • Experiment 1: The behavioral advantage for meaningful objects over colors was eliminated when PI was equated, suggesting the effect is not due to increased WM capacity.
  • Experiment 1 Modeling: The advantage was linked to stronger familiarity signals, while recollection remained stable across stimulus types.
  • Experiment 2 CDA: No evidence for increased WM storage; CDA slopes and plateaus were similar for meaningful objects and colors, with additive differences between stimulus types.

Conclusions:

  • The apparent advantage of meaningful objects in WM tasks is primarily due to reduced PI and enhanced LTM contributions (familiarity), not an expansion of WM storage capacity.
  • When PI is controlled, WM storage limits are equivalent for simple features and meaningful objects.
  • Future research and theories of memory limits should account for PI and LTM interactions in WM paradigms.