Citation

Liu T, Becker MW. Psychol. Sci. 2013; 24(6): 1044-1050.

Affiliation

1Department of Psychology.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797612464381

PMID

23592650

Abstract

Previous research suggests that there is a limit to the rate at which items can be consolidated in visual short-term memory (VSTM). This limit could be due to either a serial or a limited-capacity parallel process. Historically, it has proven difficult to distinguish between these two types of processes. In the present experiment, we took a novel approach that allowed us to do so. Participants viewed two oriented gratings either sequentially or simultaneously and reported one of the gratings' orientation via method of adjustment. Performance was worse for the simultaneous than for the sequential condition. We fit the data with a mixture model that assumes performance is limited by a noisy memory representation plus random guessing. Critically, the serial and limited-capacity parallel processes made distinct predictions regarding the model's guessing and memory-precision parameters. We found strong support for a serial process, which implies that one can consolidate only a single orientation into VSTM at a time.

Language: en