Dataset Information

The Role of the Oculomotor System in Updating Visual-Spatial Working Memory across Saccades.

ABSTRACT: Visual-spatial working memory (VSWM) helps us to maintain and manipulate visual information in the absence of sensory input. It has been proposed that VSWM is an emergent property of the oculomotor system. In the present study we investigated the role of the oculomotor system in updating of spatial working memory representations across saccades. Participants had to maintain a location in memory while making a saccade to a different location. During the saccade the target was displaced, which went unnoticed by the participants. After executing the saccade, participants had to indicate the memorized location. If memory updating fully relies on cancellation driven by extraretinal oculomotor signals, the displacement should have no effect on the perceived location of the memorized stimulus. However, if postsaccadic retinal information about the location of the saccade target is used, the perceived location will be shifted according to the target displacement. As it has been suggested that maintenance of accurate spatial representations across saccades is especially important for action control, we used different ways of reporting the location held in memory; a match-to-sample task, a mouse click or by making another saccade. The results showed a small systematic target displacement bias in all response modalities. Parametric manipulation of the distance between the to-be-memorized stimulus and saccade target revealed that target displacement bias increased over time and changed its spatial profile from being initially centered on locations around the saccade target to becoming spatially global. Taken together results suggest that we neither rely exclusively on extraretinal nor on retinal information in updating working memory representations across saccades. The relative contribution of retinal signals is not fixed but depends on both the time available to integrate these signals as well as the distance between the saccade target and the remembered location.

SUBMITTER: Boon PJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5025159 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The Role of the Oculomotor System in Updating Visual-Spatial Working Memory across Saccades.

Boon Paul J PJ Belopolsky Artem V AV Theeuwes Jan J

PloS one 20160915 9

Visual-spatial working memory (VSWM) helps us to maintain and manipulate visual information in the absence of sensory input. It has been proposed that VSWM is an emergent property of the oculomotor system. In the present study we investigated the role of the oculomotor system in updating of spatial working memory representations across saccades. Participants had to maintain a location in memory while making a saccade to a different location. During the saccade the target was displaced, which wen ...[more]

PMID: 27631767

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Project description:Ample research in visual working memory (VWM) has demonstrated that the memorized items are maintained in integrated spatial configurations, even when the spatial context is task irrelevant. These insights were obtained in studies in which participants were provided with the information they memorized. However, the encoding of provided information is only one aspect of memory. In everyday life, individuals often construct their own memory representations, an aspect of memory we have previously termed self-initiated (SI) working memory. In this study, we employed a SI VWM task in which participants selected the visual targets they memorized. The spatial locations of the targets were task irrelevant. Nevertheless, we were interested to see whether participants would construct spatially structured memory representations, which would suggest that they intended to maintain the visual targets as integrated spatial configurations. The results of two experiments demonstrated that participants constructed spatially structured configurations relative to random displays. Specifically, participants selected visual targets in close spatial proximity and constructed spatial sequences with short distances and fewer path crossings. When asked to construct configurations for a hypothetical competitor in a memory contest, participants disrupted the spatial structure by selecting visual targets that were further apart and by increasing the distances between them, which suggests that these characteristics were under their control. At the end of each experiment, participants provided verbal descriptions of the strategies they used to construct the memory displays. While the spatial structure of the SI memory representations was robust, it was absent from the participants' explicit descriptions, which focused on non-spatial strategies. Participants reported selecting items based, most frequently, on semantic categories and visual features. Taken together, these results demonstrated that participants had access to the metacognitive knowledge on the spatial structure of VWM representations, knowledge they manipulated to construct memory representations that enhanced or disrupted memory performance. While having a profound impact on behavior, this metacognitive knowledge on spatial structure remained implicit, as it was absent from the participants' verbal reports. Viewed from a larger perspective, this study explores how individuals interact with the world by actively structuring their surroundings to maximize cognitive performance.

Dataset Information

The Role of the Oculomotor System in Updating Visual-Spatial Working Memory across Saccades.

Publications

The Role of the Oculomotor System in Updating Visual-Spatial Working Memory across Saccades.

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