Abstract
Although substantial evidence demonstrates that directing attention to specific items is important for improving the performance of visual working memory (VWM), it is still not clear whether the attended items were better protected. The present study, thus, adopted a pre-cueing paradigm to examine the effect of attention direction and perceptual distractor on VWM. The results showed that a valid visual cue improved the individuals’ VWM performances and reduced their reaction time compared to the invalid and neutral cues. However, the VWM performances in the valid and neutral cue conditions were more disrupted by a post-stimuli distractor compared to the invalid cue condition. The findings suggest that although directing attention can improve the VWM performance, it is not efficient in protecting information from being distracted.
Highlights
Visual working memory (VWM) is a system that temporarily maintains and manipulates visual information to support goal-directed activities (Baddeley, 2012; Baddeley et al, 2019)
The simple analysis (Multivariate tests) of the interaction showed that accuracy was higher in the nodistractor condition than that of the distractor condition for valid [F(1, 23) = 5.18, p = 0.032, η2p = 0.18] and neutral cue condition [F(1, 23) = 8.62, p = 0.007, η2p = 0.27], but not for invalid cue condition (F < 1)
We replicated the well-established pre-cueing effect (Griffin and Nobre, 2003; Dube et al, 2017; Emrich et al, 2017), with better VWM performances and faster reaction time in the valid cue condition compared to the neutral and invalid cue conditions, indicating that attention direction during VWM encoding facilitates the processing of the cued items
Summary
Visual working memory (VWM) is a system that temporarily maintains and manipulates visual information to support goal-directed activities (Baddeley, 2012; Baddeley et al, 2019). It is essential in many cognitive activities, such as reading, reasoning, and visual searching; its capacity is limited to approximately four items (Luck and Vogel, 2013; Adam et al, 2017). The effect of attention direction on VWM has been explored by using a retro-cue paradigm In this paradigm, a visual cue is presented after the memory array to inform participants that the cued item is most likely to be tested at retrieval. According to the resource-based model of VWM (Bays and Husain, 2008; Bays and Taylor, 2018), the cueing effect reflects the reallocation of resources toward the cued item from the uncued items, which enhances the quality of the cued item and protects them from distraction
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