Developmental differences in the impact of perceptual salience on short-term memory performance and meta-memory skills
Abstract In everyday life, individuals are surrounded by many stimuli that compete to access attention and memory. Evidence shows that perceptually salient stimuli have more chances to capture attention resources, thus to be encoded into short-term memory (STM). However, the impact of perceptual sal...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Nature Portfolio
2022-05-01
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| Series: | Scientific Reports |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11624-8 |
| _version_ | 1811338865250664448 |
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| author | Tiziana Pedale Serena Mastroberardino Michele Capurso Simone Macrì Valerio Santangelo |
| author_facet | Tiziana Pedale Serena Mastroberardino Michele Capurso Simone Macrì Valerio Santangelo |
| author_sort | Tiziana Pedale |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract In everyday life, individuals are surrounded by many stimuli that compete to access attention and memory. Evidence shows that perceptually salient stimuli have more chances to capture attention resources, thus to be encoded into short-term memory (STM). However, the impact of perceptual salience on STM at different developmental stages is entirely unexplored. Here we assessed STM performance and meta-memory skills of 6, 10, and 18 years-old participants (total N = 169) using a delayed match-to-sample task. On each trial, participants freely explored a complex (cartoon-like) scene for 4 s. After a retention interval of 4 s, they discriminated the same/different position of a target-object extracted from the area of maximal or minimal salience of the initially-explored scene. Then, they provided a confidence judgment of their STM performance, as an index of meta-memory skills. When taking into account ‘confident’ responses, we found increased STM performance following targets at maximal versus minimal salience only in adult participants. Similarly, only adults showed enhanced meta-memory capabilities following maximal versus minimal salience targets. These findings documented a late development in the impact of perceptual salience on STM performance and in the improvement of metacognitive capabilities to properly judge the content of one’s own memory representation. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-13T18:17:54Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-4d9b6bc85243475f9aa6158a7476869e |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2045-2322 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-13T18:17:54Z |
| publishDate | 2022-05-01 |
| publisher | Nature Portfolio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Scientific Reports |
| spelling | doaj.art-4d9b6bc85243475f9aa6158a7476869e2022-12-22T02:35:37ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222022-05-0112111310.1038/s41598-022-11624-8Developmental differences in the impact of perceptual salience on short-term memory performance and meta-memory skillsTiziana Pedale0Serena Mastroberardino1Michele Capurso2Simone Macrì3Valerio Santangelo4Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, IRCCS Santa Lucia FoundationDepartment of Psychology, School of Medicine and Psychology, Sapienza University of RomeDepartment of Philosophy, Social Sciences and Education, University of PerugiaCentre for Behavioural Sciences and Mental Health, Istituto Superiore di SanitàFunctional Neuroimaging Laboratory, IRCCS Santa Lucia FoundationAbstract In everyday life, individuals are surrounded by many stimuli that compete to access attention and memory. Evidence shows that perceptually salient stimuli have more chances to capture attention resources, thus to be encoded into short-term memory (STM). However, the impact of perceptual salience on STM at different developmental stages is entirely unexplored. Here we assessed STM performance and meta-memory skills of 6, 10, and 18 years-old participants (total N = 169) using a delayed match-to-sample task. On each trial, participants freely explored a complex (cartoon-like) scene for 4 s. After a retention interval of 4 s, they discriminated the same/different position of a target-object extracted from the area of maximal or minimal salience of the initially-explored scene. Then, they provided a confidence judgment of their STM performance, as an index of meta-memory skills. When taking into account ‘confident’ responses, we found increased STM performance following targets at maximal versus minimal salience only in adult participants. Similarly, only adults showed enhanced meta-memory capabilities following maximal versus minimal salience targets. These findings documented a late development in the impact of perceptual salience on STM performance and in the improvement of metacognitive capabilities to properly judge the content of one’s own memory representation.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11624-8 |
| spellingShingle | Tiziana Pedale Serena Mastroberardino Michele Capurso Simone Macrì Valerio Santangelo Developmental differences in the impact of perceptual salience on short-term memory performance and meta-memory skills Scientific Reports |
| title | Developmental differences in the impact of perceptual salience on short-term memory performance and meta-memory skills |
| title_full | Developmental differences in the impact of perceptual salience on short-term memory performance and meta-memory skills |
| title_fullStr | Developmental differences in the impact of perceptual salience on short-term memory performance and meta-memory skills |
| title_full_unstemmed | Developmental differences in the impact of perceptual salience on short-term memory performance and meta-memory skills |
| title_short | Developmental differences in the impact of perceptual salience on short-term memory performance and meta-memory skills |
| title_sort | developmental differences in the impact of perceptual salience on short term memory performance and meta memory skills |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11624-8 |
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