scholarly journals Inability to suppress salient distractors predicts low visual working memory capacity

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (13) ◽  
pp. 3693-3698 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Gaspar ◽  
Gregory J. Christie ◽  
David J. Prime ◽  
Pierre Jolicœur ◽  
John J. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Attentional Control ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
High Capacity ◽  
Visual Objects ◽  
Neurophysiological Activity

According to contemporary accounts of visual working memory (vWM), the ability to efficiently filter relevant from irrelevant information contributes to an individual’s overall vWM capacity. Although there is mounting evidence for this hypothesis, very little is known about the precise filtering mechanism responsible for controlling access to vWM and for differentiating low- and high-capacity individuals. Theoretically, the inefficient filtering observed in low-capacity individuals might be specifically linked to problems enhancing relevant items, suppressing irrelevant items, or both. To find out, we recorded neurophysiological activity associated with attentional selection and active suppression during a competitive visual search task. We show that high-capacity individuals actively suppress salient distractors, whereas low-capacity individuals are unable to suppress salient distractors in time to prevent those items from capturing attention. These results demonstrate that individual differences in vWM capacity are associated with the timing of a specific attentional control operation that suppresses processing of salient but irrelevant visual objects and restricts their access to higher stages of visual processing.

Bottom-up perceptual salience and top-down retro-cues concurrently determine state in visual working memory

2020 ◽  
pp. 174702182096626
Author(s):  
Lingxia Fan ◽  
Lin Zhang ◽  
Liuting Diao ◽  
Mengsi Xu ◽  
Ruiyang Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Salient Feature ◽  
Active State ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Perceptual Salience

Recent studies have demonstrated that in visual working memory (VWM), only items in an active state can guide attention. Further evidence has revealed that items with higher perceptual salience or items prioritised by a valid retro-cue in VWM tend to be in an active state. However, it is unclear which factor (perceptual salience or retro-cues) is more important for influencing the item state in VWM or whether the factors can act concurrently. Experiment 1 examined the role of perceptual salience by asking participants to hold two features with relatively different perceptual salience (colour vs. shape) in VWM while completing a visual search task. Guidance effects were found when either colour or both colour and shape in VWM matched one of the search distractors but not when shape matched. This demonstrated that the more salient feature in VWM can actively guide attention, while the less salient feature cannot. However, when shape in VWM was cued to be more relevant (prioritised) in Experiment 2, we found guidance effects in both colour-match and shape-match conditions. That is, both more salient but non-cued colour and less salient but cued shape could be active in VWM, such that attentional selection was affected by the matching colour or shape in the visual search task. This suggests that bottom-up perceptual salience and top-down retro-cues can jointly determine the active state in VWM.

scholarly journals Concurrent Guidance of Attention by Multiple Working Memory Items: Behavioral and Computational Evidence

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherie Zhou ◽  
Monicque M. Lorist ◽  
Sebastiaan Mathôt
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Behavioral Data ◽  
Drift Diffusion ◽  
Single Item ◽  
Multiple Item

AbstractDuring visual search, task-relevant representations in visual working memory (VWM), known as attentional templates, are assumed to guide attention. A current debate concerns whether only one (Single-Item-Template hypothesis, or SIT) or multiple (Multiple-Item-Template hypothesis, or MIT) items can serve as attentional templates simultaneously. The current study was designed to test these two hypotheses. Participants memorized two colors, prior to a visual-search task in which the target and the distractor could match or not match the colors held in VWM. Robust attentional guidance was observed when one of the memory colors was presented as the target (reduced response times [RTs] on target-match trials) or the distractor (increased RTs on distractor-match trials). We constructed two drift-diffusion models that implemented the MIT and SIT hypotheses, which are similar in their predictions about overall RTs, but differ in their predictions about RTs on individual trials. Critically, simulated RT distributions and error rates revealed a better match of the MIT hypothesis to the observed data than the SIT hypothesis. Taken together, our findings provide behavioral and computational evidence for the concurrent guidance of attention by multiple items in VWM.Significance statementTheories differ in how many items within visual working memory can guide attention at the same time. This question is difficult to address, because multiple- and single-item-template theories make very similar predictions about average response times. Here we use drift-diffusion modeling in addition to behavioral data, to model response times at an individual level. Crucially, we find that our model of the multiple-item-template theory predicts human behavior much better than our model of the single-item-template theory; that is, modeling of behavioral data provides compelling evidence for multiple attentional templates that are simultaneously active.

scholarly journals Can you have multiple attentional templates? Large-scale replications of Van Moorselaar, Theeuwes and Olivers (2014) and Hollingworth and Beck (2016)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcella Frătescu ◽  
Dirk Van Moorselaar ◽  
Sebastiaan Mathôt
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Boundary Conditions ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Multiple State ◽  
Bias Attention ◽  
Larger Sample

AbstractStimuli that resemble the content of visual working memory (VWM) capture attention. However, theories disagree on how many VWM items can bias attention simultaneously. The multiple-state account posits a distinction between template and accessory VWM items, such that only a single template item biases attention. In contrast, homogenous-state accounts posit that all VWM items bias attention. Recently, Van Moorselaar et al. (2014) and Hollingworth and Beck (2016) tested these accounts, but obtained seemingly contradictory results. Van Moorselaar et al. (2014) found that a distractor in a visual-search task captured attention more when it matched the content of VWM (memory-driven capture). Crucially, memory-driven capture disappeared when more than one item was held in VWM, in line with the multiple-state account. In contrast, Hollingworth and Beck (2016) found memory-driven capture even when multiple items were kept in VWM, in line with a homogenous-state account. Considering these mixed results, we replicated both studies with a larger sample, and found that all key results are reliable. It is unclear to what extent these divergent results are due to paradigm differences between the studies. We conclude that is crucial to our understanding of VWM to determine the boundary conditions under which memory-driven capture occurs.

scholarly journals The development of retro-cue benefits with extensive practice: Implications for capacity estimation and attentional states in visual working memory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Zerr ◽  
Surya Gayet ◽  
Floris van den Esschert ◽  
Mitchel Kappen ◽  
Zoril Olah ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Change Detection ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
High Capacity ◽  
Visual Short Term Memory ◽  
Memory Store ◽  
Visual Interference ◽  
Memory Resources

AbstractAccessing the contents of visual short-term memory (VSTM) is compromised by information bottlenecks and visual interference between memorization and recall. Retro-cues, displayed after the offset of a memory stimulus and prior to the onset of a probe stimulus, indicate the test item and improve performance in VSTM tasks. It has been proposed that retro-cues aid recall by transferring information from a high-capacity memory store into visual working memory (multiple-store hypothesis). Alternatively, retro-cues could aid recall by redistributing memory resources within the same (low-capacity) working memory store (single-store hypothesis). If retro-cues provide access to a memory store with a capacity exceeding the set size, then, given sufficient training in the use of the retro-cue, near-ceiling performance should be observed. To test this prediction, 10 observers each performed 12 hours across 8 sessions in a retro-cue change-detection task (40,000+ trials total). The results provided clear support for the single-store hypothesis: retro-cue benefits (difference between a condition with and without retro-cues) emerged after a few hundred trials and then remained constant throughout the testing sessions, consistently improving performance by two items, rather than reaching ceiling performance. Surprisingly, we also observed a general increase in performance throughout the experiment in conditions with and without retro-cues, calling into question the generalizability of change-detection tasks in assessing working memory capacity as a stable trait of an observer (data and materials are available at osf.io/9xr82 and github.com/paulzerr/retrocues). In summary, the present findings suggest that retro-cues increase capacity estimates by redistributing memory resources across memoranda within a low-capacity working memory store.

scholarly journals Target prevalence in a visual search task differentially modulates lure effects from visual working memory

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (10) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Beatriz Gil Gómez de Liaño ◽  
Trafton Drew ◽  
Daniel Rin ◽  
Jeremy Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Target Prevalence

scholarly journals Transdiagnostic comparison of visual working memory capacity in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine V. Barnes-Scheufler ◽  
Caroline Passow ◽  
Lara Rösler ◽  
Jutta S. Mayer ◽  
Viola Oertel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bipolar Disorder ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Effect Size ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Medium Effect ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Small Effect Size ◽  
The Difference

Abstract Background Impaired working memory is a core cognitive deficit in both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Its study might yield crucial insights into the underpinnings of both disorders on the cognitive and neurophysiological level. Visual working memory capacity is a particularly promising construct for such translational studies. However, it has not yet been investigated across the full spectrum of both disorders. The aim of our study was to compare the degree of reductions of visual working memory capacity in patients with bipolar disorder (PBD) and patients with schizophrenia (PSZ) using a paradigm well established in cognitive neuroscience. Methods 62 PBD, 64 PSZ, and 70 healthy controls (HC) completed a canonical visual change detection task. Participants had to encode the color of four circles and indicate after a short delay whether the color of one of the circles had changed or not. We estimated working memory capacity using Pashler’s K. Results Working memory capacity was significantly reduced in both PBD and PSZ compared to HC. We observed a small effect size (r = .202) for the difference between HC and PBD and a medium effect size (r = .370) for the difference between HC and PSZ. Working memory capacity in PSZ was also significantly reduced compared to PBD with a small effect size (r = .201). Thus, PBD showed an intermediate level of impairment. Conclusions These findings provide evidence for a gradient of reduced working memory capacity in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, with PSZ showing the strongest degree of impairment. This underscores the importance of disturbed information processing for both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Our results are compatible with the cognitive manifestation of a neurodevelopmental gradient affecting bipolar disorder to a lesser degree than schizophrenia. They also highlight the relevance of visual working memory capacity for the development of both behavior- and brain-based transdiagnostic biomarkers.

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