How low can you go? Changing the resolution of novel complex objects in visual working memory according to task demands
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Summary
This study investigates whether the resolution (precision) of novel complex objects in visual working memory (WM) can be adjusted according to task demands. Previous research on simple, familiar stimuli yielded mixed results regarding the trade-off between the quantity of items held in memory and their resolution. The authors sought to determine if novel complex objects, which typically consume more WM resources, exhibit flexible resolution or if they require a fixed, minimal level of detail to be maintained. The researchers conducted three experiments using a bilateral change-detection task while monitoring the contralateral delayed activity (CDA), an electrophysiological marker that tracks the deployment of WM resources during the maintenance phase. In Experiment 1, participants performed a medium-resolution task, distinguishing between different random polygons. Experiment 2 induced a low-resolution demand by requiring participants to distinguish polygons from other stimulus categories (e.g., cubes, letters), theoretically allowing for coarser representation. Experiment 3 induced a high-resolution demand by requiring discrimination between highly similar polygons from the same set. Color squares served as a baseline condition across all experiments. The results demonstrated that the resolution of novel complex objects is not fully flexible. In Experiment 1, novel polygons elicited a higher CDA amplitude than simple color squares, confirming they are represented with higher resolution. In Experiment 3, the high-resolution demand led to a further increase in CDA amplitude, indicating that resolution can be increased when task demands require finer discrimination. However, in Experiment 2, the low-resolution task failed to produce a decrease in CDA amplitude; the neural resources devoted to polygons remained high despite the reduced need for detailed information. These findings suggest that while the resolution of novel complex objects in visual WM can be increased to meet high-precision demands, it cannot be decreased below a certain threshold. This implies that maintaining novel complex items requires a minimal level of resolution, likely because these items lack long-term memory traces and must be encoded as detailed pieces of information. The study supports the view that capacity and resolution in visual WM reflect distinct mechanisms and highlights that the representation of novel complex stimuli is constrained by a minimum precision requirement, unlike simple familiar objects which may allow for more flexible resource allocation.
Provenance
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-19 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-26 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-20 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-20 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-20 |
| enrich | success | openalex | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-20 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-19 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-20 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-26; verification: verified.
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