Completion of a partially occluded object requires that a representation of the whole is constructed based on the information provided by the physically specified parts of the stimulus. Such processes of amodal completion rely on the generation and maintenance of a mental image that renders the completed object in visual working memory (VWM). The present study examined this relationship between...

Efficient visual search requires that attention is guided strategically to relevant objects, and most theories of visual search implement this function by means of a target template maintained in visual working memory (VWM). However, there is currently debate over the architecture of VWM-based attentional guidance. We contrasted a single-item-template hypothesis with a multiple-item-template hy...

The relationship between object files and visual working memory (VWM) was investigated in a new paradigm combining features of traditional VWM experiments (color change detection) and object-file experiments (memory for the properties of moving objects). Object-file theory was found to account for a key component of object-position binding in VWM: With motion, color memory came to be associated...

The amount of visual information an individual can actively represent is severely limited; this limitation is known as the capacity of visual working memory (VWM). To estimate an individual’s VWM capacity, we present an observer with a memory array containing multiple visual stimuli to remember over a relatively short delay interval, after which we test their memory (Figure 1(a)). When we exami...

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the verbal memory and working memory impairment in healthy siblings of patients with schizophrenia.  Methods: The purpose of this study was to compare cognitive deficits in siblings of the patients with schizophrenia and control group. A total of 35 unaffected siblings of patients with schizophrenia were selected from the relatives of the pat...

In two experiments, we examined the influence of visual working memory (VWM) on oculomotor selection, testing whether the landing positions of rapidly generated saccades are biased toward the region of an object that matches a feature held in VWM. Participants executed a saccade to the center of a single saccade target, divided into two colored regions and presented on the horizontal midline. C...

Visual working memory (VWM) permits the maintenance of object identities and their locations across brief delays such as those accompanying eye movements. Recent neuroimaging studies have emphasized the role of the posterior parietal lobe in this process although the specific nature of this involvement in VWM remains controversial. Neuroimaging findings suggest that the parietal lobe may have a...

Visual working memory (VWM) is a crucial part of our cognitive system. Currently there is an active debate how the apparent limitations of VWM should be described. Limited-slot and flexible-resource theories are discussed, but so far the temporal dynamics of representations stored in VWM are not fully understood. In this paper we present data that supports the notion of dynamic VWM contents wit...

There are many benefits to having a highly accurate representation of the environment. Why, then, has evolution equipped us with a visual working memory (VWM) system that can represent only a handful of items with high accuracy? Here, we offer a normative explanation for this limitation by conceptualizing VWM as a system that balances between two conflicting goals: keeping memory errors small a...