Exploring the contributions of spatial and non-spatial working memory to priming of pop-out

Abstract

Priming of pop-out (PoP) refers to the facilitation of performance that occurs when a target-defining feature is repeated across consecutive trials in a pop-out oddball search task. The underlying mechanism of PoP has been poorly understood and raises important questions about how our visual system is guided by past experiences, even during bottom-up processing. Lee, Mozer, and Vecera (Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 71, 1059-1071, 2009) demonstrated that PoP remained unaffected by a concurrent non-spatial visual working memory (VWM) load, and they concluded that PoP occurs through feature gain modulation, essentially eliminating the contribution of memory representations in VWM to PoP. In the present study, we followed up on those results by (a) replicating the null effect of non-spatial VWM load on PoP and (b) examining the effect of spatial VWM load on PoP. The results showed that spatial VWM load does interfere with PoP, supporting the notion that spatial VWM is involved in PoP. In Experiment 2, we extended this finding by manipulating VWM load and observing its consequence on the magnitude of PoP. Increasing spatial VWM load decreased the amount of PoP observed, in a dose-dependent manner, whereas changes in non-spatial VWM load did not. Contrary to Lee et al.'s conclusions, these results suggest that VWM resources appear to contribute to the occurrence of PoP, supporting the theory that PoP is, in fact, a multilevel process in which the deployment of spatial attention, relying on VWM representations, plays an important role.

Visual working memory load does not eliminate visuomotor repetition effects

“…Indeed, Experiment 2 did reveal an interaction between memory load and the benefits of repeating a target location, consistent with a reduction in IOR (Castel et al, 2003;Zhang & Zhang, 2011). Our findings also align well with studies of the failure of visual working memory load to affect priming of pop-out, given that simply loading visual working memory with colors does not reduce color-based priming of pop-out (Ahn et al, 2017;Carlisle & Kristjánsson, 2018;Lee, Mozer, & Vecera, 2009;Kristjánsson, Saevarsson, & Driver, 2013). Our results similarly show that maintaining visual features in working memory does not reduce the impact of recently processed features on response time.…”

“…Our results also cast some additional doubt on the involvement of visual attention in these visuomotor repetition effects (see also Hilchey, Antinucci, Lamy, & Pratt, in press;Hilchey et al, 2017b;Hilchey et al, 2018). Given that spatial working memory load tends to interact with the operation of spatial attention (Ahn, Patel, Buetti, & Lleras, 2017;Castel et al, 2003;Woodman & Luck, 2004;), spatial WM load ought to have altered visuomotor biases here too if these biases resulted from how spatial attention was deployed during the task. Indeed, Experiment 2 did reveal an interaction between memory load and the benefits of repeating a target location, consistent with a reduction in IOR (Castel et al, 2003;Zhang & Zhang, 2011).…”

The Essential Role of Executive Attention in Unconscious Visuomotor Priming

“…In addition, it should be noted that the stimuli domain is a critical factor in this line of work (Ahn et al, 2017 ). Martens et al ( 2011 ) introduced a special dual-task paradigm in which an induction task was followed by a masked priming task and the two tasks shared the same or different stimuli domain (semantic-semantic vs. perceptual-semantic vs. perceptual-perceptual vs. perceptual-semantic).…”