Object-based selection in visual working memory

Yin-Ting Lin,Daryl Fougnie,Garry Kong

doi:10.3758/s13423-021-01971-4

Yin-Ting Lin, Daryl Fougnie + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-01971-4

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Abstract

Attentional mechanisms in perception can operate over locations, features, or objects. However, people direct attention not only towards information in the external world, but also to information maintained in working memory. To what extent do perception and memory draw on similar selection properties? Here we examined whether principles of object-based attention can also hold true in visual working memory. Experiment 1 examined whether object structure guides selection independently of spatial distance. In a memory updating task, participants encoded two rectangular bars with colored ends before updating two colors during maintenance. Memory updates were faster for two equidistant colors on the same object than on different objects. Experiment 2 examined whether selection of a single object feature spreads to other features within the same object. Participants memorized two sequentially presented Gabors, and a retro-cue indicated which object and feature dimension (color or orientation) would be most relevant to the memory test. We found stronger effects of object selection than feature selection: accuracy was higher for the uncued feature in the same object than the cued feature in the other object. Together these findings demonstrate effects of object-based attention on visual working memory, at least when object-based representations are encouraged, and suggest shared attentional mechanisms across perception and memory.

Highlights

Visual attention selects salient or behaviorally relevant objects, resulting in faster and more accurate responses to those objects at the expense of other information in the environment (Duncan, 1984; Egly et al, 1994; Maunsell & Treue, 2006; Posner, 1980)
What happens when information is no longer available to perception? We can temporarily hold taskrelevant information in visual working memory (VWM), and recent research has suggested that selective attention mechanisms operate in working memory (Chun et al, 2011; Kiyonaga & Egner, 2013)
Work addressing whether selection in perception and VWM draw on similar representational properties (Kong & Fougnie, 2019) provides another avenue to investigate this question

Summary

Introduction

Visual attention selects salient or behaviorally relevant objects, resulting in faster and more accurate responses to those objects at the expense of other information in the environment (Duncan, 1984; Egly et al, 1994; Maunsell & Treue, 2006; Posner, 1980). Paradigms of object-based attention have shown enhanced performance for features on the same object, compared to those on overlapping or equidistant locations on different objects (Duncan, 1984; Egly et al, 1994), demonstrating a sameobject advantage that is independent of space-based attention (but see Donovan et al, 2017; Vecera, 1994). Recent work has shown the importance of location in feature binding in memory (Golomb et al, 2014; Kovacs & Harris, 2019; Pertzov & Husain, 2014; Schneegans & Bays, 2017) and even suggested that observed object-based benefits arise from effects of spatial selection (Wang et al, 2016). Participants were tested on their updated memory in a changedetection display, in which we scrambled the location and diminished the size of bars to encourage encoding of objects (rather than spatial positions)

Method

Results and discussion