ROC Studies of Visual Working Memory

描述（由申请人提供）：视觉工作记忆在短时间内维持信息是自然视觉和各种认知功能的关键功能。然而，在许多精神疾病（如精神分裂症和抑郁症）和神经疾病（如自闭症、多动症和健忘症）中，工作记忆可以被选择性地损害。本研究的重点是通过整合健康参与者的数量和质量测量，以及通过剔除健忘症和精神分裂症患者的项目和联想信息的选择性损伤，来更好地表征存储在VWM中的信息。工作记忆通常被认为不同于长期记忆，因为它反映了由有限数量的项目组成的有限容量系统。然而，最近的研究表明，视觉工作记忆可能能够存储来自视觉场景的大量信息，因此工作记忆的容量实际上可能是无限的。这项拟议的研究旨在通过借用长期记忆研究的定量心理物理学方法来对比这两种对立的观点。支持这两种相反观点的定量模型将被测试，以对抗一个新提出的模型，该模型独立地测量工作记忆表征的数量和质量。这种方法随后将应用于健忘症和精神分裂症患者，以解决工作记忆中的另一个主要开放性问题。具体来说，工作记忆中的简单特征（例如，草莓的形状）和关系信息（例如，盒子里草莓的位置和颜色）是由不同的机制支持的吗？本提案的两个研究目标都以两个培训目标为基础并与之相结合。一是将长期记忆研究的理论结构和定量方法应用到工作记忆研究中。第二种是接受记忆神经心理学研究方面的培训，并将其应用于工作记忆的拟议工作。该奖学金对申请人的长期职业发展至关重要，申请人寻求发展一个独立的研究项目，结合定量心理物理学和翻译方法来研究正常和异常的记忆功能。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Maintenance of information over a short period of time in visual working memory is a critical function for natural vision and various cognitive functions. However, working memory can be selectively impaired in many psychiatric (e.g., schizophrenia and depression) and neurological (e.g., Autism, ADHD, and Amnesic) conditions. The proposed research focuses on a better characterization of information stored in VWM by integrating both measures of quantity and quality in healthy participants, and by factoring out selective impairments in item and associative information on amnesic and schizophrenia patients. Working memory is typically assumed to differ from long-term memory in the sense that it reflects a limited capacity system consisting of a limited number of items. However, recent work has suggested that visual working memory may be able to store a rich amount of information from visual scenes and thus the capacity of working memory may be virtually unlimited. The proposed research aims to contrast these two opposing views by using quantitative psychophysical methods borrowed from research on long-term memory. Quantitative models that underlie these two opposing views will be tested against a newly proposed model that independently measures the quantity and quality of working memory representations. This approach will then be applied to amnesic and schizophrenia patients to address another major open issue in working memory. Specifically, are simple features (e.g., the shape of a strawberry) and relational information (e.g., the location and color of a strawberry in a box) in working memory supported by different mechanisms? Both research aims of this proposal are grounded on and integrated with two training goals. The first is to apply the theoretical constructs and quantitative methods from long-term memory studies to the proposed study on working memory. The second is to receive training in neuropsychological studies of memory and to apply that to the proposed work in working memory. This fellowship is vital for the long-term career development of the applicant, who seeks to develop an independent research program that combines quantitative psychophysics and translational approaches to study normal and abnormal memory functioning. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Maintenance of information over a short period of time in visual working memory not only supports natural vision (e.g., maintaining saccade targets across eye movements) and various cognitive functions (e.g., language comprehension and general intelligence), but also suffers severe impairment in many psychiatric (e.g., schizophrenia) and neurological (e.g., autism and ADHD) conditions. The proposed research assesses a novel way of characterizing working memory by integrating measures of two different aspects of working memory--quantity and quality--which have been the foundations for two major opposing hypotheses about limitations in working memory. The importance of this approach is made concrete by applying the proposed model to explore the possible impairment in object and associative information in working memory in amnesic patients who have suffered medial temporal lobe damage and schizophrenia patients.