Attention capture by episodic long-term memory

Nickel, Allison; Hopkins, Lauren; Minor, Greta; Hannula, Deborah E.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104312

Cited by 16 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…A variable buffer (between 0-31º) was added at the "starting point" of the hue generation process to allow the generated sets to differ from one another across blocks. The colors were generated in sets (as opposed to random selection from the color wheel) to be consistent with prior literature in the attentional capture field (Anderson & Halpern, 2017;Nickel et al, 2020) as well as to ease memorization in the Training Phase.…”

Section: Color Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Third, some features (e.g., color, relative to shape) lead to faster or stronger evidence accumulation -perhaps because colors are typically more salient than shapes (Theeuwes, 1991). For example, color can elicit stronger attentional guidance effects than directional cues (Fan et al, 2021, Experiment 2) and irrelevant colors are more distracting than irrelevant shapes (Theeuwes, 1991;Nickel et al, 2020). Finally, evidence is summed over an object, and the object with the most accumulated evidence guides attention.…”

Section: Proposed Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In such a scenario, how might WM and LTM compete for attention? Research has demonstrated that attentional guidance from WM or LTM can occur automatically, even when irrelevant to the current task and employing them would lead to distraction from current attentional goals (Downing, 2000;Soto et al, 2005Soto et al, , 2008Fan & Turk-Browne, 2016;Nickel et al, 2020;Günseli et al, 2016). This suggests that when WM and LTM are placed in competition with one anotherthat is, when a WM representation and a LTM representation suggest attentional goals that are inconsistent with one another, even if only one memory is currently task-relevant -behavioral deficits should emerge relative to when only one memory guides attention.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We test two alternative hypotheses about how WM and LTM may compete with one another. First, because both WM and LTM can lead to automatic attentional capture (Downing, 2000;Soto et al, 2005Soto et al, , 2008Fan & Turk-Browne, 2016;Nickel et al, 2020;Günseli et al, 2016), one might hypothesize that competition would be symmetrical. That is, irrelevant WM representations may hinder LTM-guided search just as much as the other way around.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Long-term memory and working memory compete and cooperate to guide attention

Hirschstein

Aly

2022

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Multiple types of memory guide attention: Both long-term memory (LTM) and working memory (WM) effectively guide visual search. Furthermore, both types of memories can capture attention automatically, even when detrimental to performance. It is less clear, however, how LTM and WM cooperate or compete to guide attention in the same task. In a series of behavioral experiments, we show that LTM and WM reliably cooperate to guide attention: Visual search is faster when both memories cue attention to the same spatial location (relative to when only one memory can guide attention). LTM and WM competed to guide attention in more limited circumstances: Competition only occurred when these memories were in different dimensions -particularly when participants searched for a shape and held an accessory color in mind. Finally, we found no evidence for asymmetry in either cooperation or competition: There was no evidence that WM helped (or hindered) LTM-guided search more than the other way around. This lack of asymmetry was found despite differences in LTM-guided and WM-guided search overall, and differences in how two LTMs and two WMs compete or cooperate with each other to guide attention. This work suggests that, even if only one memory is currently task-relevant, WM and LTM can cooperate to guide attention; they can also compete when distracting features are salient enough. This work elucidates interactions between WM and LTM during attentional guidance, adding to the literature on costs and benefits to attention from multiple active memories. SignificanceAt any given moment, multiple memories may be in mind. This can include information we learned some time ago (long-term memory; LTM) and information we recently acquired (working memory; WM). How do such memories interact to direct how we pay attention? We found that LTM and WM cooperate to guide attention, leading to better performance when both memories (vs. only one) suggest a common goal. LTM and WM sometimes competed, however, leading to worse performance when they suggested different goals. These results therefore highlight the dynamic ways that multiple memories can interact to guide our attention.

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Section: Color Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Proposed Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Long-term memory and working memory compete and cooperate to guide attention

Hirschstein

Aly

2022

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…After being generated, the color sets were switched 50% of the time to ensure that any given color was equally likely to be present in the first or second set. The colors were generated in sets (as opposed to random selection from the color wheel) to be consistent with prior literature in the attentional capture field (Anderson & Halpern, 2017;Nickel et al, 2020) as well as to ease memorization in the Training Phase.…”

Section: Color Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-term memory and working memory compete and cooperate to guide attention

Hirschstein¹,

Aly²

2022

Preprint

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Multiple types of memory guide attention: Both long-term memory (LTM) and working memory (WM) effectively guide visual search. Furthermore, both types of memories can capture attention automatically, even when detrimental to performance. It is less clear, however, how LTM and WM cooperate or compete to guide attention in the same task. In a series of behavioral experiments, we show that LTM and WM reliably cooperate to guide attention: Visual search is faster when both memories cue attention to the same spatial location (relative to when only one memory can guide attention). LTM and WM competed to guide attention in more limited circumstances: Competition only occurred when these memories were in different dimensions — particularly when participants searched for a shape and held an accessory color in mind. Finally, we found no evidence for asymmetry in either cooperation or competition: LTM helped (or hindered) WM-guided search to the same degree that WM helped (or hindered) LTM-guided search. This lack of asymmetry was found despite differences in LTM-guided and WM-guided search overall, and differences in how two LTMs and two WMs compete or cooperate with each other to guide attention. This work suggests that, even if only one memory is currently task-relevant, WM and LTM can cooperate to guide attention; they can also compete when distracting features are salient enough. This work elucidates interactions between WM and LTM during attentional guidance, adding to the literature on costs and benefits to attention from multiple active memories.

show abstract