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Poster F in Poster Session F: Thursday, August 6, 1:45 – 3:30 pm, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

Geometric Context Distorts Visual Spatial Working Memory

Dongwook Lim¹, Thomas Christopher Sprague¹; ¹University of California, Santa Barbara

Presenter: Dongwook Lim

Spatial working memory (WM) is often observed to leverage retinotopic neural population codes to encode remembered locations over brief delays. However, behavioral reports can reveal systematic distortions, suggesting additional structure. We tested whether minimal geometric context—defined by enclosing apertures—sculpts the topography of remembered locations. Participants encoded a target within one of four apertures (circle, square, tall rectangle, wide rectangle) and reported its location after a delay via memory-guided saccade or mouse click. Rectangular apertures produced strong anisotropies: response variability elongated along the aperture's long axis, and radial biases differed across axes. In contrast, circular and square apertures yielded comparatively isotropic error distributions. These effects generalized across response modalities, suggesting a shared representational origin rather than motor-specific noise. These findings argue against a purely retinotopic coordinate system of spatial WM and indicate that geometric context systematically shapes both bias and variability of representations.

Topic Area: Memory, Learning & Knowledge Structures