A direct comparison of attentional orienting to spatial and temporal positions in visual working memory

Abstract

Different visual attributes effectively guide attention to specific items in visual working memory (VWM), ensuring that particularly important memory contents are readily available. Predictable temporal structures contribute to this efficient use of VWM: items are prospectively prioritized when they are expected to be needed. Occasionally, however, visual events only gain relevance through their timing after they have passed. We investigated retrospective attentional orienting based on temporal position by directly comparing it with orienting to spatial locations, which is typically considered the most powerful selection mechanism. In a colour-change-detection task, in which items appeared sequentially at different locations, symbolic number cues validly indicated the temporal or spatial location of the upcoming probe item either before encoding (precues; Experiment 1) or during maintenance (retrocues; Experiments 1–3). Temporal and spatial cues were physically identical and only differed in their mapping onto either temporal or spatial positions. Predictive cues yielded cueing benefits (i.e., higher accuracy and shorter reaction times) as compared with neutral cues, with larger benefits for precues than for retrocues. Importantly, spatial and temporal cueing benefits did not differ. Equivalent retrocueing benefits were also observed across different cue-probe intervals and irrespective of whether spatial or temporal position was used as retrieval cue, indicating that items were directly bound to temporal position and not prioritized via a space-based mechanism. These findings show that spatial and temporal properties can be used equally well to flexibly prioritise representations held in VWM and they highlight the functional similarities of space and time in VWM.

Shielding working-memory representations from temporally predictable external interference

“…Temporal expectations can improve performance when anticipated targets are followed by ( van Ede, Chekroud, Stokes, & Nobre, 2018 ), paired with ( Menceloglu, Grabowecky, & Suzuki, 2017 ), or embedded in distractors ( Boettcher, Shalev, Wolfe, & Nobre, n.d. ). Beyond biasing attention during perception, temporal expectations also operate in working memory, prioritising memory representations during times when they are anticipated to be most relevant for behaviour ( Heuer & Rolfs, 2021 ; Jin, Nobre, & van Ede, 2020 ; Olmos-Solis et al, 2017 ; van Ede, Niklaus, & Nobre, 2017 ; Zokaei, Board, Manohar, & Nobre, 2019 ). To date, however, it has remained unaddressed whether temporal expectations can similarly help reduce potential sources of interference during working memory, and thereby facilitate working-memory performance.…”

No trade-off between the use of space and time for working memory

“…At the same time, it has recently become clear that time can also play an important role in working memory. Like space, time (such as temporal order at encoding) may also enable object individuation 2,[19][20][21][22][23][24] and object selection 8,13,25,26 in working memory. Moreover, like for space, time may serve working memory 'incidentally', i.e., even when it is not the target memory feature 27,28 .…”

“…Space may play a role in binding the features that belong to the same object, thereby supporting object individuation [1][2][3][4][5][6] . Space may further be used as a medium for subsequent attentional selection and prioritization of specific objects within working memory [7][8][9][10][11][12] . The use of space is further consistent with sensory-recruitment models of working memory [13][14][15][16][17] whereby retinotopically organized visual cortex is also utilized for visual retention in working memory -thus 'recycling' existing visual-spatial coding architecture in the human brain 18 .…”

Capacity and selection in immersive visual working memory following naturalistic object disappearance

“…1a) -the role of space is well established. Space serves as a scaffold for working memory retention [18][19][20][21], as well as for the selection and prioritisation of specific objects within working memory [21][22][23][24]. One particular and recent demonstration of this involves spatial biases in gaze when selectively attending to objects in visual working memory [24][25][26][27] in the absence of anything to look at (see also [28][29][30][31]).…”