Visual features for perception, attention, and working memory: Toward a three-factor framework

Visual features are the general building blocks for attention, perception, and working memory. Here, I tried to combine the strengths of experimental and correlational approaches in a novel way by developing an individual-item differences analysis to extract the factors from 16 stimulus types on the basis of their roles in eight tasks. Three orthogonal factors were identified which correspond respectively to featural strength (i.e., how close a stimulus is to a basic feature), visual strength (i.e., visual quality of the stimulus), and spatial strength (i.e., how well a stimulus can be represented as a spatial structure). This FVS framework is subsequently extended to additional tasks and applied to study various questions such as the processing of Chinese characters, movements, and colors.