Visual Short-Term Memory Performance in Life and Chess

 

Visual Short-Term Memory Performance in Life and Chess

            Our visual short-term memory plays a significant role in our day-to-day lives. Whether it be from reading, driving, or board games such as chess, our visual short-term memory is constantly in use. Despite the constant use of our visual short-term memory, there are limits to the capacity of how many items we can hold in a given period. For a long time there has been consensus on what the general limits are for visual short-term memory, until a recent study in 2008 by Sligte et al. suggested findings of a high-capacity form of visual short-term memory that far exceeds the commonly agreed upon capacity. While recent studies have proven this high-capacity form to be possible, can we observe any correlation to this higher capacity in individuals such as professional chess players?

            In the article, “Does visual short-term memory have a high-capacity stage?” researchers Michi Matsukura and Andrew Hollingworth test the legitimacy of the previous findings of Sligte et al. across a series of four experiments with slight modifications to the previous work. The first three experiments involved the presentation of four digits that participants had to read aloud, followed by a memory array, a blank screen, then the visual cue. The first three experiments varied in the ways that cues were presented, either as plain bars or colored squares. However, Matsukura and Hollingworth’s found something interesting in the fourth experiment. When participants were allowed to practice for three hours before the experimental session, and during the experimental session participants’ accuracy in change detection was much higher in trials where a valid cue was present. While the researcher’s findings disagree with the possibility of the existence of a high-capacity visual short-term memory, they did in fact find that with enough practice certain individuals can exhibit a higher capacity than normal.

            In relation to this experiment, Gong et al.’s article “Recall of Briefly Presented Chess Positions and Its Relation to Chess Skill” builds upon Matsukura and Hollingworth’s findings that practice can increase the amount of information encoded in our visual short-term memory. Through an array of chunks, which were the presentation of chess boards with varying pieces and positions, researchers were able to analyze the recall of professional chess players in comparison to non-chess players. Specifically, professional chess players found greater levels of recall for chunks that represented game positions but showed similar recall to non-chess players when chunks were presented in a random assortment.

            While both of these studies explore different areas measuring visual short-term memory, both groups of researchers display similar findings that with enough practice in a respective area, one’s capacity in their visual short-term memory can be greater than normal. Perhaps through future research we can further identify ways to enhance our visual short-term memory. Or perhaps over time our visual short-term memory capacity may be enhanced as a result of evolution. Given the constant array of visual stimuli presented to us through our screens, our visual short-term memory may gradually increase over time as the number of visual stimuli we simultaneously experience increases.

 

References:

Matsukura, M., & Hollingworth, A. (2011). Does visual short-term memory have a high-capacity stage?. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18(6), 1098-1104. doi: 10.3758/s13423-011-0153-2

Gong Y, Ericsson KA, Moxley JH (2015) Recall of Briefly Presented Chess Positions and Its Relation to Chess Skill. PLoS ONE 10(3): e0118756. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0118756