TY - CONF T1 - 04. Visual memories before conscious awareness: How fragile is our Fragile Memory (FM) system? AU - Conway, Erin A. AU - Hale, Ralph G. AB - Previous research suggests Fragile Memory (FM) has a higher capacity and slower mental degradation rate compared to Working Memory (WM). These memories are retrievable after an attention shift but are erased when a new scene occupies the same physical space with similar stimuli. The purpose of this study is to probe storage capabilities of the FM system using three-dimensional appearing cubes. Each stimulus array consists of four cubes surrounding fixation, with individual cubes varying by orientation (up versus down) and rotation (0° versus 45°). Each trial starts with a center fixation point. Then an initial array (four cubes in a randomized configuration) are presented. This array must be memorized. Fixation then moves away from center to shift participant attention, followed by an interference array consisting of solid color polygons peripheral to the cube array. Participants count the number of colors represented by the polygons, thereby preventing WM from maintaining the initial array. On half of the trials, a line will then cue one of the four locations from the initial array. A final array is shown, and participants indicate whether or not there is a change from the initial array. Half of the trials will have a change from initial to final array, and changes only occur on a single cube. Locations “retro-cued” during the trial should result in noticeable rotational changes due to the robust FM system; however orientation changes and non-cued changes should not be noticed. This is the first study to test FM in this specific way. DA - 2021-3-26 PY - 2024 PB - unav N1 -

Acknowledgements:

Dr. Ralph Hale

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