Competing Working Memory Contents: Perceptual over Semantic Prioritization and Voluntary Retrieval following Retro-Cueing

Abstract

Retrospective attention is involuntarily or voluntarily oriented to working memory (WM) contents. Previous research has not assessed voluntary attention ruling out the effects of involuntary attention. Furthermore, it is unknown whether the voluntariness of attention impacts differently on perceptual and semantic WM contents. To address this, reaction time and accuracy data from two retro-cueing experiments were modeled with a drift-diffusion model. Surprisingly, the voluntariness of attention did not interact with the WM content type. In turn, drift rates indicated that attention exerted greater retro-cueing effects on perceptual vs. semantic WM contents, and non‐decision times revealed effects only for voluntary attention. This evidences: first, that attention has a stronger impact on the quality of perceptual over semantic contents when they compete for WM storage; second, that voluntariness is crucial for retrieving WM contents in advance of decision-making; finally, the effects of voluntary attention can be independent of involuntary attentional orienting.