title: Categorical working memory representations are used in delayed estimation of continuous colors.
abstract: In the last decade, major strides have been made in understanding visual working memory through mathematical modeling of color production responses. In the delayed color estimation task (Wilken & Ma, 2004), participants are given a set of colored squares to remember, and a few seconds later asked to reproduce those colors by clicking on a color wheel. The degree of error in these responses is characterized with mathematical models that estimate working memory precision and the proportion of items remembered by participants. A standard mathematical model of color memory assumes that items maintained in memory are remembered through memory for precise details about the particular studied shade of color. We contend that this model is incomplete in its present form because no mechanism is provided for remembering the coarse category of a studied color. In the present work, we remedy this omission and present a model of visual working memory that includes both continuous and categorical memory representations. In 2 experiments, we show that our new model outperforms this standard modeling approach, which demonstrates that categorical representations should be accounted for by mathematical models of visual working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors: Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri.
authors: Kyle O
authors: KO
authors: Hardman
authors: Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva.
authors: Evie
authors: E
authors: Vergauwe
authors: Department of Psychology, College of Staten Island, City University of New York.
authors: Timothy J
authors: TJ
authors: Ricker
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult