Abstract
The Atkinson-Shiffrin modal model forms the foundation of our understanding of human memory. It consists of three stores (Sensory Memory (SM), also called iconic memory, Short-Term Memory (STM), and Long-Term Memory (LTM)), each tuned to a different time-scale. Since its inception, the STM and LTM components of the modal model have undergone significant modifications, while, SM has remained largely unchanged, representing a large capacity system funneling information into STM. Moreover, how SM can work in ecological viewing conditions remains an unsolved problem. In the laboratory, visual memory is usually tested by presenting a brief static stimulus and, after a delay, asking observers to report some aspect of the stimulus. However, under ecological viewing conditions, our visual system receives a continuous stream of inputs, which is segmented into distinct spatio-temporal segments, called events. Events are further segmented into event-segments. We show, in a set of 5 experiments, that SM is not an unspecific general funnel to STM but is allocated exclusively to the current event-segment. We presented observers with an event stimulus consisting of multiple dots (n=1 to 4) moving along bilinear trajectories with a single deviation at the mid-point of each trajectory. The synchronized deviations in the trajectories yielded two event-segments, corresponding to pre-deviation and post-deviation event-segments. Observers were cued to report the directions of pre- or post-deviation trajectories. By analyzing observers’ responses in partial- and full-report conditions, we investigated the involvement of SM for the two event-segments. The hallmarks of SM hold only for the current event segment. As the large capacity SM stores only items involved in the current event-segment, the need for event-tagging in SM is eliminated, speeding up processing in active vision. By characterizing how memory systems are interfaced with ecological events, this new model extends the Atkinson-Shiffrin model from laboratory settings to ecological conditions.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015