In this project, we aimed to develop an efficient method tomeasure dynamic visual working memory. Extant visual working memory measureswork only with static images, which participants commit to memory before beingasked a question about the stimulus, a process with two major disadvantages. Therestriction to static images is not reflective of how visual working memoryworks in real life, where most things we commit to working memory are dynamic,moving objects. Each visual working memory trial can only produce a very smallamount of data, so experiments would have to include hundreds or thousands oftrials to reliably measure visual working memory.             In thisproject, we created a dynamic working memory involve dots moving around the screenin a semi-predictable manner. The participant then retraced a dot’s movementpath using a touchscreen to minimise response error. The actual movement pathand response are compared using an exhaustive point-by-point comparison processthat produces the average under a best-case scenario. Through this process, thisexperiment can collect hundreds of data points with a single trial. Furtherexperimentation demonstrates that this new process is both reliable and powerful.

In this project, we aimed to develop an efficient method tomeasure dynamic visual working memory. Extant visual working memory measureswork only with static images, which participants commit to memory before beingasked a question about the stimulus, a process with two major disadvantages. Therestriction to static images is not reflective of how visual working memoryworks in real life, where most things we commit to working memory are dynamic,moving objects. Each visual working memory trial can only produce a very smallamount of data, so experiments would have to include hundreds or thousands oftrials to reliably measure visual working memory.             In thisproject, we created a dynamic working memory involve dots moving around the screenin a semi-predictable manner. The participant then retraced a dot’s movementpath using a touchscreen to minimise response error. The actual movement pathand response are compared using an exhaustive point-by-point comparison processthat produces the average under a best-case scenario. Through this process, thisexperiment can collect hundreds of data points with a single trial. Furtherexperimentation demonstrates that this new process is both reliable and powerful.

Attention is the ability to filter out irrelevant noise andfocus only on what is currently important. It is typically studied in thecontext of attending to perception, i.e., directly externally towards theworld. However, attention can also be directed internally, towards objects heldin visual working memory. This project aimed to investigate this internally-directedattention, and specifically, how this process compared to the typicalexternally-directed attention. We hypothesised that differences between visualand memory representations in the brain would inevitable cause differenced inhow attention would interact with the two. Previous research on external attentionsuggests that only a single feature can be attended to at a time in perception,but this attended feature can be switched at will, rapidly and effortlessly. Thisresearch project found that when internally attending to visual working memory,attention can then be drawn only to a single, primary feature. Accessing otherfeatures first required going through the primary feature. In other words, thisprimary feature acts as an attentional index through which the objects inmemory can be subsequently accessed. Furthermore, the choice of the primaryfeature appears to be under volitional control, likely selected at the time ofmemory encoding.