Our ability to remember what we have seen is remarkably limited. Most current views characterize this limit as a fixed number of items – only 4 objects – that can be held in visual working memory. Here we show that visual memory capacity is not fixed by number of objects, but rather is a limited resource that is shared out dynamically between all items in the visual scene. This resource can be shifted flexibly between objects, with allocation biased by selective attention and towards targets of upcoming eye movements. The proportion of resources allocated to each item determines the precision with which it is remembered, a relationship that we show is governed by a simple power law, allowing quantitative estimates of resource distribution in a scene.
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