Visual working memory for simple and complex visual stimuli
Open accessAbstract
Does the magical number four characterize our visual working memory (VWM) capacity for all kinds of objects, or is the capacity of VWM inversely related to the perceptual complexity of those objects? To find out how perceptual complexity affects VWM, we used a change detection task to measure VWM capacity for six types of stimuli of different complexity: colors, letters, polygons, squiggles, cubes, and faces. We found that the estimated capacity decreased for more complex stimuli, suggesting that perceptual complexity was an important factor in determining VWM capacity. However, the considerable correlation between perceptual complexity and VWM capacity declined significantly if subjects were allowed to view the sample memory display longer. We conclude that when encoding limitations are minimized, perceptual complexity affects, but does not determine, VWM capacity.
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Visual working memory shows minimal effects of practice and experience.
“However, this alone does not explain why visual working memory, which shows minimal effects of practice and experience (Eng, Chen & Jiang, 2005), peaks later than digit-symbol coding, nor why emotion recognition peaks before vocabulary.”
From When does cognitive functioning peak? The asynchronous rise and fall of different cognitive abilities across the life span (2015) · cites this paper as Eng, Chen & Jiang, 2005
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Addressing altered anticipation as a transdiagnostic target through computational psychiatry
Sepúlveda, P., Aitsahalia, I., Kumar, K., Atkin, T., & Iigaya, K. (2025) · Biological Psychiatry Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging · doi:10.1016/j.bpsc.2025.02.014 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
- Authors
- Eng, H. Y., Chen, D., & Jiang, Y.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Eng, Hing Yee
- Jiang, Yuhong
- ORCID
- Jiang, Yuhong
- Venue
- Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
- Published
- 2005-12
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1127-1133
- ISSN
- 1069-9384 (ISSN-L)
- 1531-5320
- OpenAlex
- W2124750986
- Cited by
- 301
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 23 · 2018: 16 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 24
- FWCI
- 4.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0345525)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Abilities and Testing
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- visual working memory, working memory capacity, perceptual complexity, change detection, memory encoding, face memory, color memory
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Humans, Memory, Reaction Time, Saccades, Visual Perception, Signal Detection, Psychological
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