Relationship between the characteristics of visual short-term memory in monkeys and the spatial properties of images.

Experiments were performed on Rhesus macaques to study the relationship between delayed visual differentiation processes and stimulus properties. These investigations showed that the processes of short-term storage of visual information in monkeys has significant features associated with differences in stimulus properties. These consisted of different durations of storage and motor response times. Because of these differences, stimuli (15 pairs) could be grouped into compact clusters on the bases of similarity between their delayed differentiation characteristics. These experiments characterized the processes of short-term information storage during the differentiation of stimuli differing in terms of spatial relationships between elements, as compared with stimuli differing in terms of other attributes (shape, color, etc.); spatial information was stored for shorter periods of time and motor response times were longer. It is suggested that visual short-term memory involves a set of mechanisms operating on attributes of different types and which, along with signs and working programs associated with the visual system, stores spatial discriminatory signs, in which the major role is played by visual-vestibular interactions.