Our short-term visual memory is more flexible than scientists had imagined, UK researchers have discovered. It is not restricted to a limited number of objects, as previously thought, but can be “shared out” across a whole image, with more memory allocated to objects of interest and less to background detail.

Paul Bays and Masud Husain asked volunteers at University College London to look at a computer screen featuring a number of objects. After a few seconds it went blank and one object reappeared in a slightly different place. The volunteer then had to say whether it had moved to the right or left.

The accuracy with which people could recall the object's original position decreased gradually as the scene became more crowded, but there was no sharp drop in performance at a limit of four or five objects as prevailing wisdom would suggest. The study appears on the 8 Aug in Science.

When watching an Olympic relay race, for example, we might allocate more memory to the faces of the team we are supporting but also allocate a significant proportion to the baton, a key object in the scene. While less important details, such as the athletes' clothes and members of the other teams, will be recalled less clearly, visually arresting details – such as a runner's pink hair – will catch our attention and will be allocated more memory, too.

“It's all about allocating working memory to the things that are most important,” says Dr Bays. “When something grabs our attention, we divert some of our working memory to it in case it turns out to be important. In other words, it gets the lion's share of memory resources.”

英國(guó)研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，短期視覺(jué)記憶比科學(xué)家想象的更加靈活。這種記憶并不像人們?cè)瓉?lái)以為的那樣，只局限于有限數(shù)目的物體，而是能夠在整體景象中進(jìn)行“分配”。讓人感興趣的物體會(huì)分配到更多的記憶，背景因素則分配到較少的記憶。

保羅•貝斯(Paul Bays)和馬蘇德•侯賽因(Masud Husain)要求倫敦大學(xué)學(xué)院(University College London)的志愿者觀看一個(gè)電腦屏幕，屏幕上先是顯示一些物體，幾秒后變成空白，然后一個(gè)物體重新出現(xiàn)，但位置略有些變動(dòng)。志愿者須說(shuō)出這個(gè)物體向左還是向右移了。

隨著屏幕上的物體增多，人們回憶物體原始位置的準(zhǔn)確性出現(xiàn)遞減。但在物體只有四、五件時(shí)，記憶的準(zhǔn)確性并未大幅下降，這與普遍的觀點(diǎn)不同。此項(xiàng)研究結(jié)果登載在8月8日的《科學(xué)》(Science)雜志上。

譬如，在觀看奧運(yùn)會(huì)接力賽跑時(shí)，我們可能將更多的記憶分配給我們所支持的那一隊(duì)，場(chǎng)中關(guān)鍵物體——接力棒也會(huì)占據(jù)較大一部分記憶。雖然對(duì)于次要的細(xì)節(jié)，如運(yùn)動(dòng)員的服裝和其他隊(duì)的成員，記憶會(huì)比較不清晰，但在視覺(jué)上容易引起注意的細(xì)節(jié)，如運(yùn)動(dòng)員粉紅色的頭發(fā)，會(huì)吸引我們的注意。

“這涉及到將工作記憶分配給那些最重要的事物。”貝斯表示。“當(dāng)某樣?xùn)|西吸引我們的注意時(shí)，我們將部分工作記憶轉(zhuǎn)移到它上面，以備這件東西最終變得很重要。換句話說(shuō)，它得到很大份額的記憶資源。”