Abstract
The current study examined selective encoding in visual working memory by systematically investigating interference from task-irrelevant features. The stimuli were objects defined by three features (color, shape, and location), and during a delay period, any of the features could switch between two objects. Additionally, single- and whole-probe trials were randomized within experimental blocks to investigate effects of memory retrieval. A series of relevant-feature switch detection tasks, where one feature was task-irrelevant, showed that interference from the task-irrelevant feature was only observed in the color-shape task, suggesting that color and shape information could be successfully filtered out, but location information could not, even when location was a task-irrelevant feature. Therefore, although location information is added to object representations independent of task demands in a relatively automatic manner, other features (e.g., color, shape) can be flexibly added to object representations.
Highlights
We can effortlessly and simultaneously perceive objects that consist of many features such as color, shape, and location
We investigated the nature of feature bindings in visual working memory (VWM) by examining (1a) how flexible object features could be bound in VWM
We evaluated the flexibility of object representations in VWM, using a task where participants were asked to detect whether specific features changed, instead of a conventional change detection task
Summary
We can effortlessly and simultaneously perceive objects that consist of many features such as color, shape, and location These features are well known to be processed in separate brain regions. Luck and Vogel [3] and, more extensively, Vogel, Woodman and Luck [4], showed that multiple features of a single object could be bound together as a single unit in VWM They showed that an estimated capacity for multi-feature objects was as good as the capacity for each simple feature about 3–5 objects in a shortterm change-detection task. This basic finding has been replicated repeatedly, and it seems that VWM stores features in an integrated way. We focused on whether we can selectively bind only task relevant visual features, or all the visual features are automatically bound independent of task relevancy. (1b) All of the visual features are bound in the same way, or a specific feature plays a special role in binding. (2) Based on the previous study by Wheeler and Treisman [5], in which they reported that accuracy in VWM binding task depends on task demands (especially retrieval difficulty), we are interested in whether specific feature binding can be retrieved than other feature bindings
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