Information recovery of visual work memory: visual buffer necessity

• Grant number: 13/27183-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2014
• End date: April 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Cesar Alexis Galera
• Grantee: Isabella Wada e Pucci
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Mental imagery and visual memory have been considered as separate components in the information coding, and associated with different processes of working memory.Experimental evidence show, for example, that the performance in the memory based on the generation of mental imageries (visual imagination) suffers the interference from dynamic visual noise (RVD),but the same effect is not observed in visual memory tasks based on visual perception (visual memory).Although several evidences show that tasks of visual imagination and memory are based on different cognitive processes, we can not discard that also in common use cases, and some experimental results that show differences between the two tasks resulting from methodological differences between the paradigms used to study them. Thus, in this study we attempted to equate the tasks of visual imagination and memory to analyze cognitive mechanisms during the recovery phase of visual information, comparing the effects of an irrevant visual stimulation on performance in visual memory tasks with retroactive tip and tasks to generate mental imageries.