Author(s): Mindi Price , Candice Morey , Richard Morey , Yixia Zheng

Presentation: poster

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is believed to have a limited capacity. To reduce memory load, grouping occurs according to Gestalt-based perceptual principles such as the principle of similarity. The current study examined the effect of grouping by colors using a change-detection task. Participants studied an array of colored squares, among which either two items shared the same color, or all squares had unique colors. We found that when there were two items grouped by a common color, memory performance was better. The benefit was observed only when a grouped item was tested, suggesting selective coding of items grouped by color. However, eye movement data showed that the grouped items were not attended to differently from the non-grouped ones. The amount of time participants spent fixating on the items did not depend on whether it was a grouped item or not. We concluded that grouping might be an automatic process.

The College of Idaho     2112 Cleveland Blvd Caldwell, ID  8360     USA 208-459-5011    800-2C-IDAHO