Filtering performance in visual working memory is improved by reducing early spatial attention to the distractors

Allon, Ayala S.; Luria, Roy

doi:10.1111/psyp.13323

Cited by 21 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 73 publications

(126 reference statements)

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“…That is, the N2pc to the cue is followed by a positivity to the stimulus appearing at the cued location. This interpretation is consistent with classical findings of enhanced P1 components to stimuli in the attended visual hemifield (Heinze et al, 1990;Luck et al, 1990) or with research demonstrating an enhanced P1 when a target stimulus appears at the location of auditory (Störmer et al, 2009;McDonald et al, 2005) or visual cues (Allon & Luria, 2019;Hopfinger & Ries, 2005). In the current set of experiments, the target position was balanced with respect to the cue position.…”

Section: Differential Signal Enhancementsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…It is likely that the CP results from an increase of the contralateral P1 to the stimulus appearing at the same location as the cue. Previous research has established that an increased P1 to cued targets reflects attentional enhancement of perceptual processing (Allon & Luria, 2019;Fukuda & Vogel, 2009;Störmer, McDonald, & Hillyard, 2009;Hopfinger & Ries, 2005;McDonald, Teder-Salejarvi, Di Russo, & Hillyard, 2005;. Although the CP is induced by the lateralized cue, it is triggered by the search display.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Attentional Templates Are Sharpened through Differential Signal Enhancement, Not Differential Allocation of Attention

Kerzel

Cong

2021

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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In visual search, the internal representation of the target feature is referred to as attentional template. The attentional template can be broad or precise depending on the task requirements. In singleton search, the attentional template is broad because the target is the only colored element in the display. In feature search, a precise attentional template is required because the target is in a specific color in an array of varied colors. To measure the precision of the attentional template, we used a cue-target paradigm where cueing benefits decrease when the cue color differs from the target color. Consistent with broad and precise attentional templates, the decrease of cueing effects was stronger in feature than in singleton search. Measurements of ERPs showed that the N2pc elicited by the cue decreased with increasing color difference, suggesting that attention was more strongly captured by cues that were similar to the target. However, the cue-elicited N2pc did not differ between feature and singleton search, making it unlikely to reflect the mechanism underlying attentional template precision. Furthermore, there was no evidence for attentional suppression as there was no cue-elicited PD, even in conditions where the cueing benefit turned into a same-location cost. However, an index of signal enhancement, the contralateral positivity, reflected attention template precision. In general, there was sensory enhancement of the stimulus appearing at the cued location in the search display. With broad attentional templates, any stimulus at the cued location was enhanced, whereas enhancement was restricted to target-matching colors with precise attentional templates.

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Section: Differential Signal Enhancementsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Attentional Templates Are Sharpened through Differential Signal Enhancement, Not Differential Allocation of Attention

Kerzel

Cong

2021

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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“…Filtering of sad faces is Filtering of negative faces in dysphoria 7 expected to be more efficient than filtering of fearful faces in the control group, because threat perception is prioritized for evolutionary reasons in human information processing (LeDoux, 1996). Regarding the dysphoric group, we expect that the negative attentive bias can cause a difficulty to suppress attention to sad distractors (Allon & Luria, 2019) and lead to unnecessary storage of the sad distractors.…”

Section: Filtering Of Negative Faces In Dysphoriamentioning

confidence: 99%

Alterations in working memory maintenance of fearful face distractors in depressed participants: An ERP study

C¹,

Xu²,

X³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Previous studies conducted in healthy humans by applying event-related potentials have shown that task-irrelevant fearful faces are difficult to filter from visual working memory (VWM), and anxiety symptoms increase this difficulty. It is not known, however, whether non-threatening faces are also difficult to be filtered and whether depression symptoms affect it. We tested whether task-irrelevant sad and fearful faces are differently stored by dysphoric (elevated amount of depressive symptoms) and control participants who performed a VWM task related to objects’ colors. We found that even if the groups differ neither in their VWM capacity, nor behavioral distractibility, they differed in filtering ability as indexed by the contralateral delay activity, a specific index for the maintenance phase of the VWM. Control participants unnecessarily stored fearful faces in memory, but they were able to filter sad faces, suggesting that specifically threatening faces are difficult to filter from VWM in healthy individuals. Dysphoric participants filtered both fearful and sad face distractors efficiently. Thus, depression-related attentional bias toward sad faces, if existing here, seems not to result in unnecessary storage of sad faces. Our results suggest a threat-related filtering difficulty and unexpected lack of this difficulty in negative face filtering in participants with depression symptoms.

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“…Higher scores indicate that increasing the array by adding distractors that need to be filtered out interfered with performance. Filtering cost is the main measure that has been used in studies of filtering in VWM (Allon & Luria, 2017, 2019Vogel et al, 2005).…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We used a variant of the change-detection task that directly investigates filtering efficiency (Allon & Luria, 2017, 2019Vogel et al, 2005). Each trial in the task started with the presentation of a black fixation sign ("+") in the middle of the screen for 500 ms. Then a display of either three targets, six targets, or three targets and three distractors (i.e., the filtering condition) was presented, in intermixed random order.…”

Section: Filtering Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concrete mindset impairs filtering in visual working memory

2019

Self Cite

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Two studies tested whether a mindset manipulation would affect the filtering of distractors from entering visual working memory (VWM). In Study 1, participants completed a concrete mindset manipulation (by repeatedly describing how to perform an action), an abstract mindset manipulation (by repeatedly describing why to perform an action), and a baseline condition (no manipulation). In Study 2, some participants completed a concrete mindset manipulation, whereas others completed an abstract manipulation. Filtering efficiency was estimated by a change-detection task that included a condition with distractors alongside targets. We derived our prediction from construal-level theory (CLT), according to which concrete representations retain information regardless of its relevance, whereas abstract representations retain the relevant and omit the irrelevant elements of an input array. In a task that requires attending to task-relevant targets and ignoring task-irrelevant distractors in a visual array, concrete processing should impair performance relative to abstract processing. We therefore predicted that a concrete mindset would reduce filtering efficiency as compared to an abstract mindset. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that a concrete mindset manipulation reduced filtering efficiency, as compared to both an abstract mindset manipulation (Studies 1 and 2) and the baseline condition (Study 1). These results suggest a new factor that may contribute to both individual differences and situational variation in working memory performance.

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Filtering performance in visual working memory is improved by reducing early spatial attention to the distractors

Cited by 21 publications

References 73 publications

Attentional Templates Are Sharpened through Differential Signal Enhancement, Not Differential Allocation of Attention

Attentional Templates Are Sharpened through Differential Signal Enhancement, Not Differential Allocation of Attention

Alterations in working memory maintenance of fearful face distractors in depressed participants: An ERP study

Concrete mindset impairs filtering in visual working memory

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