PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Mark W. Schurgin
AU  - John T. Wixted
AU  - Timothy F. Brady
TI  - Psychological Scaling Reveals a Single Parameter Framework For Visual Working Memory
AID  - 10.1101/325472
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 325472
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/05/18/325472.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/05/18/325472.full
AB  - Limits on the storage capacity of working memory have been investigated for decades, but the nature of those limits remains elusive. An important but largely overlooked consideration in this research concerns the relationship between the physical properties of stimuli used in visual working memory tasks and their psychological properties. Here, we show that the relationship between physical distance in stimulus space and the psychological confusability of items as measured in a perceptual task is non-linear. Taking into account this relationship leads to a parsimonious conceptualization of visual working memory, greatly simplifying the models needed to account for performance, allowing generalization to new stimulus spaces, and providing a mapping between tasks that have been thought to measure distinct qualities. In particular, performance across a variety of working memory tasks can be explained by a one-parameter model implemented within a signal detection framework. Moreover, despite the system-level distinctions between working and long-term memory, after taking into account psychological distance we find a strong affinity between the theoretical frameworks that guide both systems, as performance is accurately described using the same straightforward signal detection framework.