The privileged role of location in visual working memory

Pertzov, Yoni; Husain, Masud · 2013 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/s13414-013-0541-y

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Summary

This study investigates whether spatial location holds a privileged role in visual working memory (WM), specifically examining if objects are maintained in memory bound to their spatial positions even when location is irrelevant to the task. Previous research has yielded conflicting results: some studies suggest WM representations are abstract and independent of location, while others argue that location facilitates the binding of nonspatial features. To resolve this, Pertzov and Husain utilized continuous-report tasks, which offer greater sensitivity than traditional change-detection tasks by allowing detailed analysis of error types. The researchers conducted three experiments using a serial presentation paradigm where participants viewed a sequence of four colored bars with distinct orientations and were later probed to recall the orientation of a specific target. In Experiment 1, participants were probed by color while the spatial arrangement of stimuli was manipulated. In the "same-location" condition, all four bars appeared at the same spatial position; in the "different-location" condition, they appeared at distinct positions. Results showed that when items shared the same location, participants exhibited significantly higher error rates. Crucially, a probabilistic mixture model analysis revealed that this impairment was not due to a loss of precision or random guessing, but rather a systematic increase in "misreporting" errors—participants frequently reported the orientation of a nontarget object that had been presented at the same location as the target. Experiment 2 tested whether a similar effect occurred with nonspatial features by probing participants by location while manipulating color. When all items shared the same color versus different colors, no significant difference in performance or error distribution was observed. Experiment 3 controlled for potential differences in probing methods by randomly probing by either color or location for items that differed in both features. No significant difference was found between probing methods, confirming that the results from Experiment 1 were not artifacts of the retrieval cue. The findings demonstrate that spatial location has a privileged role in visual working memory. Unlike other features, sharing a spatial location causes interference that leads to the misattribution of features between objects. This suggests that nonspatial features are bound to an object’s location in memory, and that distinct spatial positions help distinguish between items. These results challenge the view that WM representations are entirely divorced from spatial context, supporting the hypothesis that location serves as a critical anchor for maintaining integrated object representations, even when spatial information is task-irrelevant.

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• working memory