Abstract
Here we introduce a novel visual working memory tracking paradigm to measure visual working memory, inspired by continuous psychophysics and motion object tracking. Participants viewed a sequence of stimuli moving along variable paths and were asked to reproduce the path by tracing it on a touchscreen. This reproduction was then compared to the original stimulus to determine error and thus visual working memory performance. Across four experiments, we found that this new method is efficient, reliable and powerful, with only 10 trials per condition required for stable performance estimates, requiring less than 5 minutes of testing. We also demonstrated that the method shows minimal effects from perceptual or attentional confounds. Most importantly, since performance was measured across the trial, this method also allows for the investigation of how visual working memory changes across time. By averaging equivalent time points across trials, we can identify influences from both primacy and recency effects, as well as quantify performance around particularly important points along the motion path. The visual working memory tracking paradigm is therefore especially useful when experimental time is limited, the number of experimental conditions is extensive or when the time-course is the key interest. The method also opens up the study of visual working memory with dynamic stimuli.