Rapid development of feature binding in visual short-term memory.
The binding of object identity (color) and location in visual short-term memory (VSTM) was examined in 6.5- to 12.5-month-old infants (N= 144). Although we previously found that by age 6.5 months, infants can represent both color and location in VSTM, in the present study we observed that 6.5-month-old infants could not remember trivially simple color-location combinations across a 300-ms delay. However, 7.5-month-old infants could bind color and location as effectively as 12.5-month-old infants. Control conditions confirmed that the failure of 6.5-month-old infants was not a result of perceptual or attentional limitations. This rapid development of VSTM binding between 6.5 and 7.5 months occurs during a period of rapid increase in VSTM storage capacity and just after a period of dramatic neuroanatomical changes in parietal cortex. Thus, the ability to bind features and the ability to store multiple objects may both depend on a process that is mediated by posterior parietal cortex and is perhaps related to focused attention.
Oakes
Lisa M
LM
University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA. lmoakes@ucdavis.edu
Ross-Sheehy
Shannon
S
Luck
Steven J
SJ
D001288:Attention; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D013028:Space Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception