Attribute amnesia (Chen & Wyble, 2015, 2016) demonstrates that we may not always be able to spontaneously retrieve a simple attribute of a visual object (e.g., its color) for conscious report, even though the object had just been the target in a visual task. Attribute amnesia has been suggested to reflect a lack of consolidation of the task-irrelevant attribute in visual working memory. Here we tested whether saccadic selection eliminates or attenuates attribute amnesia. Saccade targets have been shown to be preferentially encoded into visual working memory and may therefore be spared. We used simple color pop-out displays, asking participants to indicate the location of the color singleton letter target on each trial either by keypress or by making a saccade toward it. After a couple of trials and unannounced to the participants, we asked for the color and identity of the last target letter on a surprise trial. We found that saccade targets were not spared from attribute amnesia: Participants were as bad in correctly reporting the color in the saccade as in the keypress condition. For letter identity, the effect was attenuated but not abolished when the target was foveated for a short period of time. We argue that the current results do not refute an obligatory coupling between saccadic selection and encoding in visual working memory. However, the encoded information may not necessarily be stored in a manner that is robust enough to persist in the face of a surprise question.

Even in sparse visual environments, observers may not be able to report features of objects they have just encountered in a surprise question. Attribute amnesia and seeing without knowing describe report failures for irrelevant features of objects that have been processed to some extent in the primary task. Both phenomena are attributed to the exclusive selection of relevant information for memory consolidation or for awareness, respectively. While attribute amnesia was found even for irrelevant attributes of the target in the primary task, seeing without knowing was not observed when a single object was presented foveally. To elucidate this discrepancy, we examined report failures for irrelevant attributes of single target objects, which were presented either in the fovea or in the periphery, and either at cued or uncued locations. On a surprise trial, observers were able to report the irrelevant shape and color of the target object when it was presented foveally. However, presenting the same object just slightly away from the fovea led to report failures for shape. Introducing a valid peripheral cue prior to target presentation reduced report failures for shape when the cue was predictive of the target location, suggesting that the pre-allocation of endogenous spatial attention promoted the processing of irrelevant shape information. In accordance with previous research, we suggest that these modulations are due to differences in late selection for conscious awareness or consolidation in working memory.