The Gestalt principle of similarity benefits visual working memory

• Published in: Psychonomic bulletin & review Vol. 20; no. 6; pp. 1282 - 1289
• Main Authors: Peterson, Dwight J., Berryhill, Marian E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.12.2013; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Accuracy; Arrays; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Brief Report; Cognitive Psychology; Color Perception - physiology; Experiments; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Gestalt Theory; Human; Humans; Learning. Memory; Male; Memory; Memory, Short-Term - physiology; Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology; Perception; Principles; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reaction Time; Recognition (Psychology); Space Perception - physiology; Studies; Vision; Visual Perception - physiology; Young Adult; Perceptual organization; Visual working memory; Gestalt principles; Human; Visual memory; Memory; Cognition; Experimental study; Vision; Stimulus similarity; Working memory; Gestalt theory; Stimulus organization
• ISSN: 1069-9384; 1531-5320
• DOI: 10.3758/s13423-013-0460-x

Visual working memory (VWM) is essential for many cognitive processes, yet it is notably limited in capacity. Visual perception processing is facilitated by Gestalt principles of grouping, such as connectedness, similarity, and proximity. This introduces the question, do these perceptual benefits extend to VWM? If so, can this be an approach to enhance VWM function by optimizing the processing of information? Previous findings have demonstrated that several Gestalt principles (connectedness, common region, and spatial proximity) do facilitate VWM performance in change detection tasks (Jiang, Olson, & Chun, 2000 ; Woodman, Vecera, & Luck, 2003 ; Xu, 2002 , 2006 ; Xu & Chun, 2007 ). However, one prevalent Gestalt principle, similarity, has not been examined with regard to facilitating VWM. Here, we investigated whether grouping by similarity benefits VWM. Experiment 1 established the basic finding that VWM performance could benefit from grouping. Experiment 2 replicated and extended this finding by showing that similarity was only effective when the similar stimuli were proximal. In short, the VWM performance benefit derived from similarity was constrained by spatial proximity, such that similar items need to be near each other. Thus, the Gestalt principle of similarity benefits visual perception, but it can provide benefits to VWM as well.