Do we remember templates better so that we can reject distractors better?

Abstract

Feature Integration Theory proposed that attention shifted between target-like representations in our visual field. However, the nature of the representations that determined what was target like received less specification than the nature of the attention shifts. In recent years, visual search research has focused on the nature of the memory representations that we use to guide our shifts of attention. Sensitive measures of memory quality indicate that the template representations are remembered better than other, merely maintained, memories. Here we tested the hypothesis that we prepare for difficult search tasks by storing a higher fidelity target representation in working memory than we do when preparing for an easy search task. To test this hypothesis, we explicitly tested participants' memory of the target color they searched for (i.e., the attentional template) versus another memory that was not used to guide attention (i.e., an accessory representation) following blocks of searches with easy-to-find targets (i.e., distractors were homogeneously colored) to blocks of searches with hard-to-find targets (i.e., distractors were heterogeneously colored). Although homogeneous-distractor searches required minimal precision for distractor rejection, we found that templates were still remembered better than accessories, just like we found in a heterogeneous-distractor search. As a consequence, we suggest that stronger memories for templates likely reflects the need to decide whether new perceptual inputs match the template, and not an attempt to create a better template representation in anticipation of difficult searches.

Attentional guidance and match decisions rely on different template information during visual search

“…Using a visual search task for a target amongst linearly separable distractors, the results demonstrate that early attentional guidance was a coarse process mainly based on "relational" sensory information, whereas subsequent match decisions were compared against a more precisely tuned template centered on an "optimal" offtarget feature. Although previous studies have found evidence for coarse guidance (Anderson, 2014;Kerzel, 2019;Martin & Becker, 2018) and precise decisions (Rajsic & Woodman, 2020) separately, our experiments provide direct evidence that the informational content of the target template is used differently on these two subprocesses of visual search.…”

“…This process must be more precise in order to know whether an item is the same as the target or just similar. Unlike attentional guidance, the importance of this decision process on visual search has only been explored more recently (Bravo & Farid, 2014;Hout & Goldinger, 2015;Malcolm & Henderson, 2009;Rajsic & Woodman, 2020;Wolfe, 2012). In the current study, we used fixation dwell times (Experiment 1) and the DDM drift rates modeled from accuracy and RT (Experiment 2) as measurements of target-match decisions.…”

“…The template has long been hypothesized to guide attention and eye-movements to potential targets by modulating sensory gain (Chelazzi et al, 1998;Desimone & Duncan, 1995;Reynolds & Heeger, 2009;Treisman & Gelade, 1980), but only more recently has it been explicitly postulated to operate on decision processes about the target match as well (Bravo & Farid, 2014;Wolfe, 2012). For example, Hout & Goldinger (2015) hypothesized that the target template serves a dual-function to guide attention to potentially relevant items and to compare visual inputs to the memory template for target verification or rejection (see also Rajsic & Woodman, 2020). While such studies have used eye metrics to measure the effect of the template at two time-points within the "look-identify" cycle, few have considered whether the information used during guidance and decisions is the same or different (Wolfe, 2020a(Wolfe, , 2020b.…”

“…This leads to an important question of whether attentional guidance and match decisions use the same or different template information during visual search. We hypothesize that guidance might rely on a coarser version of the template and match decisions require a more precise representation (Anderson, 2014;Bravo & Farid, 2014;Kerzel, 2019;Lleras et al, 2020;Martin & Becker, 2018;Nako et al, 2016;Rajsic & Woodman, 2020;Wu et al, 2013).…”

Allocation of resources in working memory: Theoretical and empirical implications for visual search

“…In doing so, it is possible to submit the distribution of memory errors to modeling and to identify different sources of error. While a number of models have been proposed to decompose such data (e.g., Luck & Vogel, 1997 ; Oberauer & Lin, 2017 ; van den Berg et al, 2012 ; Zhang & Luck, 2008 ), the three-parameter mixture model of Bays et al ( 2009 ) has been most commonly applied to template-guided visual search (Dube & Al-Aidroos, 2019 ; Hollingworth & Hwang, 2013 ; Huynh Cong & Kerzel, 2020 ; Kerzel, 2019 ; Kerzel & Witzel, 2019 ; Rajsic et al, 2017 ; Rajsic & Woodman, 2019 ). In this model, three distributions contribute to the likelihood of a given response.…”