2008-7-8 14:17:24

Cognition：哈佛大学提出大脑视觉记忆新观点

ELSEVIER

从体育比赛中运动员的动作到人们的日常活动，每个人都要花费相当多的时间记忆别人的行为。人脑要接收和存储如此多的视觉信息，这个过程是如何实现的呢？

2008年5月的爱思唯尔期刊《认知》（Cognition）刊登了哈佛大学关于大脑视觉记忆的一项新发现。研究人员利用变化监测方法研究受试者的视觉记忆特点。受试者被要求记住一些人和他们各自实施的若干行为，这些行为只是稍稍有所不同。通过这项研究，研究人员提出了人脑身份记忆和行为记忆的新观点。最引人注意的是，研究人员发现，人脑对谁实施了行为和实施了何种行为的记忆是通过各自独立的两个记忆系统完成的。这一点表现在，受试者往往能够记住了实施行为的人和这些行为，但却在记忆“谁实施了某一行为”上出现错误。也就是说，在实施行人的人和所实施的行为的对应联系上出现记忆错误。在此基础上，研究人员进一步研究了可能克服这种记忆错误的视觉输入提示。

研究结果表明，人脑记忆系统中包含一个专职的子系统，其功能为记忆有关他人行为的信息。该研究揭示了大脑如何组织它接收到的连续不断的视觉输入（某人和他的行为），而对这些信息的记忆能力是人类社会认知能力的重要组成部分。（科学网荔涛/编译）

生物谷推荐原始出处：

（《认知》（Cognition），doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2008.02.012，Justin N. Wood）

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2008.02.012
Copyright © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Brief article

Visual memory for agents and their actions

Justin N. Wooda, E-mail The Corresponding Author

aHarvard University, Department of Psychology, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

Received 11 July 2007;

revised 11 February 2008;

accepted 26 February 2008.

Available online 9 May 2008.

Abstract

Humans spend a considerable amount of time remembering other individuals’ actions. Nevertheless, it is unclear how the visual system stores information about the identities of agents and their actions. To address this, I used a change detection method where observers were asked to remember agents and the actions they performed. Results show that observers can maintain information about both 2–3 agents and 2–3 actions simultaneously. However, they are highly impaired for remembering which agent performed which action, indicating that agent and action information are retained separately in visual working memory. Further experiments show that agent and action information can be bound together when the visual input contains the appropriate cues. However, this binding process significantly reduces the total amount of information that can be retained. Together, these results show that (1) an additional, resource-demanding process is needed to integrate agent and action information stored in separate working memory stores, and (2) the extent to which these two types of information are bound into integrated units depends largely on the presence of specific cues in the visual input.

Keywords: Visual working memory; Visual short-term memory; Actions; Agents