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The Focus of Spatial Attention Determines the Number and Precision of Face Representations in Working Memory.
- Source :
-
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) [Cereb Cortex] 2016 Jun; Vol. 26 (6), pp. 2530-40. Date of Electronic Publication: 2015 Apr 22. - Publication Year :
- 2016
-
Abstract
- The capacity of visual working memory for faces is extremely limited, but the reasons for these limitations remain unknown. We employed event-related brain potential measures to demonstrate that individual faces have to be focally attended in order to be maintained in working memory, and that attention is allocated to only a single face at a time. When 2 faces have to be memorized simultaneously in a face identity-matching task, the focus of spatial attention during encoding predicts which of these faces can be successfully maintained in working memory and matched to a subsequent test face. We also show that memory representations of attended faces are maintained in a position-dependent fashion. These findings demonstrate that the limited capacity of face memory is directly linked to capacity limits of spatial attention during the encoding and maintenance of individual face representations. We suggest that the capacity and distribution of selective spatial attention is a dynamic resource that constrains the capacity and fidelity of working memory for faces.<br /> (© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)
- Subjects :
- Adult
Discrimination, Psychological physiology
Electroencephalography
Evoked Potentials
Female
Functional Laterality
Humans
Male
Neuropsychological Tests
Photic Stimulation
Reaction Time
Attention physiology
Brain physiology
Facial Recognition physiology
Memory, Short-Term physiology
Space Perception physiology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1460-2199
- Volume :
- 26
- Issue :
- 6
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 25903465
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhv083