O papel da retrodica e da profundidade na memória operacional visual

Abstract

Visual working memory (VWM) has been predominantly studied using two-dimensional stimuli, overlooking the three-dimensional nature of the visual environment. This study investigated the role of stereoscopic depth (anaglyphs) and of the retro-cue on VWM performance, across two complementary experiments (N=25 each), using ideograms and irregular polygons as stimuli. In Experiment 1, depth was applied to the stimuli themselves; in Experiment 2, exclusively to the retro-cue, with the stimuli remaining two-dimensional. Accuracy, reaction time, sensitivity (d'), and criterion (c) were analyzed through repeated-measures ANOVA. In Experiment 1, depth in the stimuli benefited accuracy symmetrically, both in front of and behind the reference plane, and increased discriminative sensitivity more markedly when disparity was crossed; the two-dimensional condition produced the poorest performance on both measures. In Experiment 2, the benefit of the valid retro-cue generalized to accuracy, reaction time, sensitivity, and criterion; depth applied to the retro-cue itself specifically sped up reaction time — slowest precisely in the fully two-dimensional condition —, without reliably affecting accuracy or sensitivity. These findings suggest that depth serves distinct functions depending on the point in the cognitive chain at which it is introduced: as an object property, it enriches and individuates the memory trace; as a cue property, it amplifies the attentional salience of selection — contributing a context-dependent answer to the object-based versus space-based memory debate.