ArticleScientific reports2024
The voluntary utilization of visual working memory.
Article in Scientific reports, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Stable tendencies in spontaneous working memory usage during flexible behaviour.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Regulating Memory Use: Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity in Natural Tasks.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Cognitive function in patients undergoing robotic radical prostatectomy - 1 year follow up.Journal of robotic surgery · 2026Article
- Reappearing sensory input guides visual working memory prioritization.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2025Article
- Zooming in on what counts as core and auxiliary: A case study on recognition models of visual working memory.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
While a vast amount of research has focused on understanding the capacity limits of visual working memory (VWM), little is known about how VWM resources are employed in unforced behavior and how they correlate with individual capacity constraints. We present a novel, openly available, and easy-to-administer paradigm enabling participants to freely utilize their VWM capacity. Participants had to reconstruct an array of colored squares. In each trial, they were allowed to alternate between the memory array and the reconstruction screen as many times as they wished, each time choosing how many items to reconstruct. This approach allowed us to estimate the number of utilized items, as well as the accuracy of the reconstruction. In addition, VWM capacity was measured using a change detection task. In two experiments, we show that participants tend to under-utilize their VWM resources, performing well below their capacity limits. Surprisingly, while the extent to which participants utilized their VWM was highly reliable, it was uncorrelated with VWM capacity, suggesting that VWM utilization is limited due to strategic considerations rather than capacity limits.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.