Journal article
An Information Capacity Limitation of Visual Short-Term Memory
David K Sewell, Simon D Lilburn, Philip L Smith
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-HUMAN PERCEPTION AND PERFORMANCE | AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC | Published : 2014
DOI: 10.1037/a0037744
Abstract
Research suggests that visual short-term memory (VSTM) has both an item capacity, of around 4 items, and an information capacity. We characterize the information capacity limits of VSTM using a task in which observers discriminated the orientation of a single probed item in displays consisting of 1, 2, 3, or 4 orthogonally oriented Gabor patch stimuli that were presented in noise for 50 ms, 100 ms, 150 ms, or 200 ms. The observed capacity limitations are well described by a sample-size model, which predicts invariance of ∑(i)(d'(i))² for displays of different sizes and linearity of (d'(i))² for displays of different durations. Performance was the same for simultaneous and sequentially presen..
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Grants
Awarded by Australian Research Council
Awarded by Discovery Early Career Award
Funding Acknowledgements
The research in this article was supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Grants DP110103406 and DP140102970 to Philip L. Smith, and Discovery Early Career Award DE140100772 to David K. Sewell, and an Australian Postgraduate Award to Simon D. Lilburn. We thank Ed Vogel and Chris Donkin for their comments on a previous version of this article.