When Natural Behavior Engages Working Memory
| Autor: | Anna C. Nobre, Melvin Kallmayer, Dejan Draschkow |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
Cognitive systems Ecological validity media_common.quotation_subject Biology General Biochemistry Genetics and Molecular Biology 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Cognition Perception Encoding (memory) Report Natural (music) Animals Humans media_common Temporary storage Behavior Working memory Virtual Reality 030104 developmental biology Memory Short-Term General Agricultural and Biological Sciences 030217 neurology & neurosurgery Cognitive psychology |
| Zdroj: | Current Biology |
| ISSN: | 1879-0445 |
| Popis: | Summary Working memory (WM) enables temporary storage and manipulation of information,1 supporting tasks that require bridging between perception and subsequent behavior. Its properties, such as its capacity, have been thoroughly investigated in highly controlled laboratory tasks.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Much less is known about the utilization and properties of WM in natural behavior,9, 10, 11 when reliance on WM emerges as a natural consequence of interactions with the environment. We measured the trade-off between reliance on WM and gathering information externally during immersive behavior in an adapted object-copying task.12 By manipulating the locomotive demands required for task completion, we could investigate whether and how WM utilization changed as gathering information from the environment became more effortful. Reliance on WM was lower than WM capacity measures in typical laboratory tasks. A clear trade-off also occurred. As sampling information from the environment required increasing locomotion and time investment, participants relied more on their WM representations. This reliance on WM increased in a shallow and linear fashion and was associated with longer encoding durations. Participants’ avoidance of WM usage showcases a fundamental dependence on external information during ecological behavior, even if the potentially storable information is well within the capacity of the cognitive system. These foundational findings highlight the importance of using immersive tasks to understand how cognitive processes unfold within natural behavior. Our novel VR approach effectively combines the ecological validity, experimental rigor, and sensitive measures required to investigate the interplay between memory and perception in immersive behavior. Video Abstract Highlights • Gaze provides a measure of working-memory (WM) usage during natural behavior • Natural reliance on WM is low even when searching for objects externally is effortful • WM utilization increases linearly as searching for objects requires more locomotion • The trade-off between using WM versus external sampling affects performance Draschkow et al. demonstrate that reliance on working memory is low during natural behavior, even when “holding information in mind to guide future behavior” is the very essence of the task. As searching for objects externally increases in locomotive effort, WM usage increases in a shallow and linear fashion. This trade-off affects performance. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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