Familiarity and Meaning in Visual Working Memory

视觉工作记忆允许人们在意识中短暂地保持视觉信息。研究这一记忆系统的研究人员发现，人们一次能够记住的物体很少，而且这个数字与许多不同的因素有关。目前的研究集中在背景知识、熟悉度和意义等因素如何影响视觉工作记忆，这是通过持有的物体数量来衡量的。这项工作有望提高我们对视觉技能的理解，例如涉及驾驶和其他需要记忆和监控多个对象的复杂任务的技能。这项研究还有望为人工显示器和用户界面的设计提供参考。目前的研究旨在广泛了解工作记忆系统如何受到背景知识、熟悉度和意义的影响。为了分离视觉工作记忆系统，并将其与其他记忆系统，如长时记忆分开，大量的研究集中在简单形状或颜色的工作记忆上。这样的研究使我们能够分离出视觉工作记忆的贡献，但并不能说明我们在现实世界中如何使用我们的记忆。这个项目将专注于了解视觉工作记忆对有意义物体的认知和神经机制，更像我们在日常生活中遇到的物体。特别是，我们将使用旨在分离工作记忆的行为操作，以及通过脑电图仪测量大脑活动的神经标记物来跟踪视觉工作记忆中的容量，以测量有意义物体的记忆容量。我们还将采用一种认知训练模式，旨在通过在物体之间建立新的有意义的联系来提高视觉工作记忆能力。总体而言，这项研究的目标是更好地了解如何测量和改善对现实和有意义对象的视觉工作记忆。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Visual working memory allows people to briefly hold visual information in awareness. Researchers investigating this memory system have found that people are capable of holding in mind very few objects at a time, and that this number is related to many different factors. The current research focuses on how factors such as background knowledge, familiarity and meaning affect visual working memory, as measured by the number of objects that are held. This work is expected to improve our understanding of visual skills such as those involved in driving and other complex tasks that require remembering and monitoring multiple objects. It is also expected that the work will inform the design of artificial displays and user interfaces.The current research aims to broadly understand how the working memory system is affected by background knowledge, familiarity and meaningfulness. In order to isolate the visual working memory system -- and separate it from other memory systems, like long-term memory -- a large amount of research focuses on working memory for simple shapes or colors. Such research allows us to isolate the contributions of visual working memory, but is not indicative of how we use our memory in the real world. This project will focus on understanding both the cognitive and neural mechanisms of visual working memory for meaningful objects more like those we encounter in our everyday life. In particular, we will use both behavioral manipulations designed to isolate working memory and a neural marker of brain activity measured with electroencephalography to track how much is held in visual working memory to measure memory capacity for meaningful objects. We will also employ a cognitive training paradigm designed to improve visual working memory capacity by creating new meaningful connections between objects. Overall, the goal of the research is to better understand how to measure and improve visual working memory for realistic and meaningful objects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.