The effects of sequential attention shifts within visual working memory.

Qi Li,Jun Saiki

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00965

Abstract

Previous studies have shown conflicting data as to whether it is possible to sequentially shift spatial attention among visual working memory (VWM) representations. The present study investigated this issue by asynchronously presenting attentional cues during the retention interval of a change detection task. In particular, we focused on two types of sequential attention shifts: (1) orienting attention to one location, and then withdrawing attention from it, and (2) switching the focus of attention from one location to another. In Experiment 1, a withdrawal cue was presented after a spatial retro-cue to measure the effect of withdrawing attention. The withdrawal cue significantly reduced the cost of invalid spatial cues, but surprisingly, did not attenuate the benefit of valid spatial cues. This indicates that the withdrawal cue only triggered the activation of facilitative components but not inhibitory components of attention. In Experiment 2, two spatial retro-cues were presented successively to examine the effect of switching the focus of attention. We observed equivalent benefits of the first and second spatial cues, suggesting that participants were able to reorient attention from one location to another within VWM, and the reallocation of attention did not attenuate memory at the first-cued location. In Experiment 3, we found that reducing the validity of the preceding spatial cue did lead to a significant reduction in its benefit. However, performance was still better at first-cued locations than at uncued and neutral locations, indicating that the first cue benefit might have been preserved both partially under automatic control and partially under voluntary control. Our findings revealed new properties of dynamic attentional control in VWM maintenance.

Highlights

Visual working memory (VWM) refers to the cognitive ability that allows us to temporarily store a limited amount of visual information and manipulate this information online (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974; Baddeley, 1992; Cohen et al, 1997; Luck and Vogel, 1997; Smith and Jonides, 1999; Fougnie, 2009)
Some studies have found that perceptual representations matching the contents of VWM capture visual attention, indicating that information held in VWM can bias the allocation of attention (Pashler and Shiu, 1999; Downing, 2000; Soto et al, 2005)
Our results show that participants were able to use the withdrawal cue to improve VWM performance, and support the hypothesis that uncued representations are available for reorientation of attention

Summary

Introduction

Visual working memory (VWM) refers to the cognitive ability that allows us to temporarily store a limited amount of visual information and manipulate this information online (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974; Baddeley, 1992; Cohen et al, 1997; Luck and Vogel, 1997; Smith and Jonides, 1999; Fougnie, 2009). Other studies have demonstrated that attention can effectively bias the encoding and consolidation processes of VWM (Rensink et al, 1997; Becker et al, 2000; Scholl, 2000; Schmidt et al, 2002; Woodman et al, 2003). In a typical retro-cue experiment, an attentional cue indicating a to-bemaintained VWM representation is presented during the retention interval of a change detection task. Because the retro-cues were presented long after (> 1 s, beyond the range of iconic memory) the memory display offset, the retro-cue effect has been taken as evidence that visual attention can operate on mental representations during VWM maintenance. Studies directly comparing attentional selection of perceptual and mental representations have revealed considerable behavioral and neural similarities in these two cases (e.g., Nobre et al, 2004; Kuo et al, 2009; Munneke et al, 2010; Katus et al, 2014), indicating that attention works in a similar way on the mental representations as on perceptual representations

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