Visual working memory for natural scenes: challenges and opportunities

Visual working memory is a fundamental cognitive process that people use thousands of times each day as they engage in visually guided behavior. Thus, it is important to understand how the natural visual input—which consists of complex, spatially organized, continuously varying features—is represented in visual working memory. However, most research has used arrays of discrete, artificial objects defined by simple features, and existing formal models of visual working memory cannot be applied to natural scenes. In this paper, we identify 3 key aspects of natural scenes that are not captured by existing formal models of visual working memory, along with 2 distinct types of attention that must be considered. The goal is to clearly define the challenges and opportunities for moving models of visual working memory from arrays of artificial objects to natural scenes.