Discrete-slots models of visual working-memory response times.

Discrete-slots models of visual working-memory response times.

Much recent research has aimed to establish whether visual working memory (WM) is better characterized by a limited number of discrete all-or-none slots or by a continuous sharing of memory resources. To date, however, researchers have not considered the response-time (RT) predictions of discrete-slots versus shared-resources models. To complement the past research in this field, we formalize a...

Psychological Review Discrete-Slots Models of Visual Working-Memory Response Times

Landscaping analyses of the ROC predictions of discrete-slots and signal-detection models of visual working memory.

A fundamental issue concerning visual working memory is whether its capacity limits are better characterized in terms of a limited number of discrete slots (DSs) or a limited amount of a shared continuous resource. Rouder et al. (2008) found that a mixed-attention, fixed-capacity, DS model provided the best explanation of behavior in a change detection task, outperforming alternative continuous...

Visual working memory is better characterized as a distributed resource rather than discrete slots.

A recent important debate in the field of visual working memory has focused on whether it represents a small set of high-precision representations (the "slot" model) or all items in parallel (the "resource" model). When faced with a large number of items, the slot model claims that high-precision representations of several items are stored and no information is retained about the other items, w...

Discrete resource allocation in visual working memory.

Are resources in visual working memory allocated in a continuous or a discrete fashion? On one hand, flexible resource models suggest that capacity is determined by a central resource pool that can be flexibly divided such that items of greater complexity receive a larger share of resources. On the other hand, if capacity in working memory is defined in terms of discrete storage "slots," then o...