Cheung, H.W. orcid.org/0000-0002-1981-1407, Geeraert, N. orcid.org/0000-0002-0123-4664 and Loaiza, V.M. orcid.org/0000-0002-5000-7089 (2024) Evidence against effects of cultural group and prior knowledge on feature binding in working memory. Journal of Cognition, 7 (1). 62. ISSN 2514-4820
Abstract
Feature binding is the process of integrating features, such as colour and shape, into object representations. A persistent question in the literature concerning whether feature binding is an automatic or resource-demanding process may depend on unitisation, that is, whether the to-be-bound information is intrinsic (belonging to) or extrinsic (contextual). Given extensive evidence showing that Easterners may process information more holistically than Westerners, such cultural differences may be useful to understand the fundamental processes of feature binding in visual working memory (WM). Accordingly, we recruited British and Chinese participants to complete a visual WM task wherein to-be-remembered colours were integrated within (i.e., intrinsic binding) or as backgrounds (i.e., extrinsic binding) of to-be-remembered shapes (Experiments 1 and 2). Experiment 2 further investigated the role of prior knowledge in long-term memory to facilitate feature binding in WM. During retrieval, participants decided among three probes: a target, a lure (i.e., recombination of the presented features), and a new colour/shape. Hierarchical Bayesian multinomial processing tree models were fit to the data to estimate parameters representing binding and item memory. The current results suggest that intrinsic and extrinsic binding memory are similar between the two cultural groups, with no prior knowledge benefits for either intrinsic or extrinsic binding for either cultural group. This result conflicts with the Analytic and Holistic framework and suggests that there are no cultural differences or prior knowledge benefits in feature binding.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | binding; cultural differences; prior knowledge; unitisation; working memory |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Psychology (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 08 Aug 2024 08:40 |
Last Modified: | 08 Aug 2024 08:40 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Ubiquity Press, Ltd. |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.5334/joc.390 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:215821 |