Abstract
The question what is the fundamental unit of visual working memory (VWM) is one of the most important and controversial issues. Based on the "early topological perception" theory, a unique perspective to describe the representation of VWM was proposed. To investigate this question, we used an updating version of a color change detection paradigm (Kessler, 2015). Participants were presented with a memory array or two successive memory arrays. They were asked to store the items' colors of the most recently appeared memory array and to report whether the color of test item changed. The colors of the second array were either consistent with the first array (repetition) or totally different (updating). There were two experimental conditions beyond the baseline in our studies. In shape-change condition, the items' shapes (task irrelevant) in second array were different from the first memory array (e.g. a solid square to a solid disk). In topology-change condition, the item changed its topological properties (e.g. a solid square to a hollow square). In four experiments, we consistently found that there was significant repetition benefit effect on color memory in the baseline (when there is no shape-change), and shape-change condition. However, the repetition benefit effect diminished in the topology-change condition, since the item was perceived as a new object with the topological change which impaired the original memory. Therefore, the different repetition benefit effects in shape-change and topology-change conditions supported that the topological change triggers updating of information in VWM. Meanwhile, it suggested that the fundamental representation in VWM may be topological defined perceptual object.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018