title: Discrete-slots models of visual working-memory response times.
abstract: Much recent research has aimed to establish whether visual working memory (WM) is better characterized by a limited number of discrete all-or-none slots or by a continuous sharing of memory resources. To date, however, researchers have not considered the response-time (RT) predictions of discrete-slots versus shared-resources models. To complement the past research in this field, we formalize a family of mixed-state, discrete-slots models for explaining choice and RTs in tasks of visual WM change detection. In the tasks under investigation, a small set of visual items is presented, followed by a test item in 1 of the studied positions for which a change judgment must be made. According to the models, if the studied item in that position is retained in 1 of the discrete slots, then a memory-based evidence-accumulation process determines the choice and the RT; if the studied item in that position is missing, then a guessing-based accumulation process operates. Observed RT distributions are therefore theorized to arise as probabilistic mixtures of the memory-based and guessing distributions. We formalize an analogous set of continuous shared-resources models. The model classes are tested on individual subjects with both qualitative contrasts and quantitative fits to RT-distribution data. The discrete-slots models provide much better qualitative and quantitative accounts of the RT and choice data than do the shared-resources models, although there is some evidence for "slots plus resources" when memory set size is very small.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, University of New South Wales, Kensington.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Donkin
authors.forename: Robert M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Nosofsky
authors.forename: Jason M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Gold
authors.forename: Richard M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Shiffrin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
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