Feature-based change detection reveals inconsistent individual differences in visual working memory capacity

Ambrose, Joseph P., Wijeakumar, Sobanawartiny, Buss, Aaron T. and Spencer, John P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7320-144X (2016) Feature-based change detection reveals inconsistent individual differences in visual working memory capacity. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 10. ISSN 1662-5137

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Abstract

Visual working memory (VWM) is a key cognitive system that enables people to hold visual information in mind after a stimulus has been removed and compare past and present to detect changes that have occurred. VWM is severely capacity limited to around 3–4 items, although there are robust individual differences in this limit. Importantly, these individual differences are evident in neural measures of VWM capacity. Here, we capitalized on recent work showing that capacity is lower for more complex stimulus dimension. In particular, we asked whether individual differences in capacity remain consistent if capacity is shifted by a more demanding task, and, further, whether the correspondence between behavioral and neural measures holds across a shift in VWM capacity. Participants completed a change detection (CD) task with simple colors and complex shapes in an fMRI experiment. As expected, capacity was significantly lower for the shape dimension. Moreover, there were robust individual differences in behavioral estimates of VWM capacity across dimensions. Similarly, participants with a stronger BOLD response for color also showed a strong neural response for shape within the lateral occipital cortex, intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and superior IPS. Although there were robust individual differences in the behavioral and neural measures, we found little evidence of systematic brain-behavior correlations across feature dimensions. This suggests that behavioral and neural measures of capacity provide different views onto the processes that underlie VWM and CD. Recent theoretical approaches that attempt to bridge between behavioral and neural measures are well positioned to address these findings in future work.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2016 Ambrose, Wijeakumar, Buss and Spencer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	change detection,fmri,individual differences,visual working memory,working memory capacity
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Developmental Science
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	26 Apr 2016 13:00
Last Modified:	04 Aug 2023 10:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/58386
DOI:	10.3389/fnsys.2016.00033

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