Developing a Method to Measure Dynamic Visual Working Memory
| Project/Area Number |
22K13874
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Review Section |
Basic Section 10040:Experimental psychology-related
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| Research Institution | Waseda University |
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Principal Investigator |
KONG Garry 早稲田大学, 高等研究所, 講師(任期付) (70906370)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2022-04-01 – 2025-03-31
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| Project Status |
Granted (Fiscal Year 2022)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥900,000)
Fiscal Year 2024: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000)
Fiscal Year 2023: ¥1,560,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥360,000)
Fiscal Year 2022: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000)
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| Keywords | Visual Working Memory / Visual Cognition |
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| Outline of Research at the Start |
Working memory is one of the most important of cognitive psychological functions. Investigating it is typically a resource intensive process involving hundreds of trials of recalling static images. This project will develop a new experimental paradigm to measure visual working memory based on recalling dynamic sequences. By introducing movement into memory, the task remains simple and intuitive, but aggregating the memory response across time makes it eminently more efficient, powerful and representative of the true memory state.
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This research aims to create a efficient yet reliable method to measure visual working memory and establish its validity. The first part of this project is complete, with the "Visual Working Memory Tracking" paradigm designed and tested. This method takes inspiration from continuous psychophysics and multiple object tracking, such that participants view a sequence of events and then reproduce this sequence on a touchscreen. By having the stimulus as a sequence of events, we are then able to collect hundreds of data points across a single trial. Importantly, we find that new task does not suffer from perceptual or attentional confounds.
As expected, the new method has a high degree of power, with the ability to measure the difference between set sizes 2 and 4 with 10 participants and less than 10 trials (less than 15 minutes of testing per participant). More importantly, the high degree of power also allows for the study of how visual working memory resources are distributed across the trial.
This research has been presented at the Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference 2023, and will also be presented at the Vision Sciences Society 2023. The manuscript is being finalised and will be submitted to an academic journal within the month.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
The Visual Working Memory Tracking paradigm has been created and perfected enough for research usage. This side of the project has proceeded faster than expected.
Publication of the results is proceeding slower than expected due to delays at the academic journals.
The validation study is proceeding slower than expected due to effects of COVID-19 on in person testing in 2022. As these are now lifted, I expect the pace to increase during 2023.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
It has been suggested that I apply for a patent to cover the Visual Working Memory Tracking method. I plan to look into this possibility in 2023.
The validation study is the remaining goal for this study. The procedure for this has been created. All that remains is to test the 150-200 people necessary to complete the study.
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Report
(1 results)
Research Products
(2 results)
