The automatic processing of social information in working memory.

Working memory has been considered an active buffer for processing perceptual representations in a progressive manner, integrating information involuntarily to form structured mental representations. The automatic integration of objects' physical features in working memory has been well documented, although its social aspect remains unknown. The current study examines whether working memory would automatically process social information, that is, extract social information from memory content to form a higher-level social representation. Through four experiments, we demonstrate that participants could spontaneously infer personality traits when required to hold the social information implying others' traits in working memory, without the explicit goal of trait inference or awareness of the inference processes. Results show that participants mistook the memorized words for inferred trait words; such "errors" were then accumulated and amplified when the information was transmitted from person to person, during which the social information was briefly stored in working memory and reproduced after a short time. These findings indicate that working memory may automatically integrate social information into hierarchically structured mental representations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The storage mechanism of dynamic relations in visual working memory.

The ability to briefly hold and manipulate object relations provides a foundation for interacting with our complex environment. Previous studies on working memory focused more on objects than their relations, which is disproportionate in the context of their theoretical importance. This study examined dynamic relations of objects to better understand the storage mechanism (capacity and representation) using a self-developed modified change detection paradigm, where an object moved dynamically, based on its relation to other objects. Eighty-four university students participated in four experiments (21 each), wherein they observed dynamic relations between objects presented on a display, memorized them, and reported whether the memorized relations were identical to the probatory relations. Results showed that visual working memory had an upper limitation of holding dynamic relations. When relations were independent of each other, the limitation was two; whereas in non-independent cases where different relations shared an object, memory accuracy decreased with increasing relations complexity, rather than with the number of objects or relations. Thus, dynamic relations are probably not stored as object features, nor stored independent of objects. More likely, relations and objects are represented in visual working memory as an integrated perceptual unit.