Melissa Trevino and Jane Jacob, two doctoral students who were awarded the “Article of the Year,” for their article on short-term visual memory, took a two-pronged approach to the study. | Asad Badat/The Daily Cougar
A UH psychology doctoral candidate was recently awarded “Article of the Year” by Psychonomic Bulletin & Review for her master’s thesis regarding short-term visual memory.
“I was shocked. At first I thought it was spam,” said Jane Jacob. “I actually had to read the editor’s email five times to understand that our article won the award. I could not believe it. I’m so honored and thankful.”
The research looked at the process of short-term visual memory, which has shown to be complex. The two stages include brief sensory memory, capable of storing many items for a short time, and the longer visual working memory, which can hold fewer items for a longer time.
“These two types of memories are so different, and we wanted to better understand the transfer of information between them. Our results also show these two stages, but we see evidence for an intermediate stage between stage one (sensory memory) and stage two (visual working memory),” Jacob said.
“Altogether our data shows evidence for three stages (visible sensory memory, an intermediate — information being transferred from sensory memory into the next robust stage, and robust visual working memory).”
The article was co-written by Melissa Trevino, who also helped design a study to further investigate the intermediate visual memory process.
“I helped in making a clearer picture of visual processing when different stimuli are presented simultaneously,” Trevino said. “This allowed us to explore post-stimulus processing from the beginning of the first stage — visual persistence — of visual short term memories. It was an addition to the data that Jane had from her thesis.”
Although more studies need to be done to truly understand the intermediate visual memory process, Jacob’s research helps identify what happens between the first and third stages of memory.
“The impact or meaning the award has for our psychology department is twofold,” said professor and director of the Visual Cognition Lab Bruno G. Breitmeyer.
“For one, it lets the larger national and international community of cognitive scientists know that excellent work is being done in visual cognition in our department and at the University of Houston. Second, we hope it will motivate other graduate students in our department to reach for excellence in their research.”
