Technical Program

Paper Detail

Paper: PS-2B.39
Session: Poster Session 2B
Location: Symphony/Overture
Session Time: Friday, September 7, 19:30 - 21:30
Presentation Time:Friday, September 7, 19:30 - 21:30
Presentation: Poster
Publication: 2018 Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience, 5-8 September 2018, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Paper Title: Modeling Visual Working Memory in Schizophrenia
Manuscript:  Click here to view manuscript
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32470/CCN.2018.1076-0
Authors: Yijie Zhao, Xuemei Ran, Li Zhang, East China Normal University, China; Ruyuan Zhang, University of Minnesota, United States; Yixuan Ku, East China Normal University, China
Abstract: It has been well documented that people with schizophrenia (PSZ) have deficits in visual working memory (VWM). One widely acknowledged explanation is that PSZ has decreased working memory capacity compared to healthy control subjects (HCS). Here, we leveraged the state-of-the-art computational framework – the variable precision (VP) framework to disentangle the contributions of different VWM components to the atypical behavior observed in PSZ. Using a classical delay-estimation VWM task, we found that neither the memory resources across different set size levels nor the variability at the choice stage were the differences between two groups (PSZ vs. HCS). Interestingly, PSZ exhibited abnormally larger variability in allocating memory resources across items and trials. Our findings challenged the classical “limited capacity” account in PSZ and showed that larger resource allocation variability was the major determinant of the VWM deficits in PSZ, which could only be detected by the VP framework.