Visual Working Memory for Observed Actions

Human society depends on the ability to remember the actions of other individuals, which is information that must be stored in a temporary buffer to guide behavior after actions have been observed. To date, however, the storage capacity, contents, and architecture of working memory for observed acti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. General 2007-11, Vol.136 (4), p.639-652
Main Author: Wood, Justin N
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
Cognitive Processes
Experimental Psychology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Human Information Storage
Humans
Information
Learning. Memory
Male
Memory
Observation
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Retention (Psychology)
Short Term Memory
Social Perception
Spatial Ability
Visual Memory
Visual Perception
Visual Stimuli
Visual task performance
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Summary:Human society depends on the ability to remember the actions of other individuals, which is information that must be stored in a temporary buffer to guide behavior after actions have been observed. To date, however, the storage capacity, contents, and architecture of working memory for observed actions are unknown. In this article, the author shows that it is possible to retain information about only 2-3 actions in visual working memory at once. However, it is also possible to retain 9 properties distributed across 3 actions almost as well as 3 properties distributed across 3 actions, showing that working memory stores integrated action representations rather than individual properties. Finally, the author shows that working memory for observed actions is independent from working memory for object and spatial information. These results provide evidence for a previously undocumented system in working memory for storing information about actions. Further, this system operates by the same storage principles as visual working memory for object information. Thus, working memory consists of a series of distinct yet computationally similar mechanisms for retaining different types of visual information.
ISSN:0096-3445
1939-2222
DOI:10.1037/0096-3445.136.4.639