Delvenne, J.F.1 , Braithwaite, J.J.2 , Riddoch, M.J.2 , and Humphreys, G.W.2
1 . University of Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium)
2 . University of Birmingham (United Kingdom)

Abstract
We used a change detection paradigm to assess the capacity of visual short-term
memory (VSTM) for single feature such as orientation or texture of line elements. We
demonstrated that when the support of configural information was minimized (by the addition
of circles around each line), VSTM capacity was selectively disrupted for line orientation,
whereas capacity limits on memory for line texture were irrespective of whether circles were
presented to disrupt the coding of lines into a more global configuration. We conclude from
these observations that the relational information of individual visual items, based on global
spatial configuration, is stored in VSTM and may, in some cases, increase the capacity of
VSTM.