In search of the focus of attention in working memory: 13 years of the retro-cue effect

Souza, Alessandra S.; Oberauer, Klaus

doi:10.3758/s13414-016-1108-5

Cited by 371 publications

(432 citation statements)

References 139 publications

(243 reference statements)

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“…These results suggest that participants likely shifted their attention to the cued location to help maintain the prioritized information in VWM. The results also are consistent with recent research on the retro-cue paradigm suggesting that items can be retrospectively selected in VWM via covert shifts of attention to items during the delay period (Griffin & Nobre, 2003;Stokes & Nobre, 2011;Souza & Oberauer, 2016). Similar to the pre-cue condition, the PLR results from the retro-cue condition suggest that early in the delay participants maintained attention on central fixation (or attention was split to both sides of the screen), but after the presentation of the retro-cue participants covertly shifted their attention to the cued location to select and maintain the cued item in VWM.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…A typical finding is that retro-cues enhance performance relative to neutral cues (see Stokes & Nobre, 2011 for a review). Similar to the attention-based rehearsal hypothesis, it is assumed that with both spatial pre-and retro-cues attention covertly shifts to the prioritized location leading to enhanced processing (possibly via a number of different mechanisms; see Souza & Oberauer, 2016 for a review).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pupillary correlates of covert shifts of attention during working memory maintenance

Unsworth

Robison

2017

Atten Percept Psychophys

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The pupillary light reflex (PLR) was used to track covert shifts of attention to items maintained in visual working memory (VWM). In three experiments, participants performed a change detection task in which rectangles appeared on either side of fixation and at test participants indicated if the cued rectangle changed its orientation. Prior to presentation or during the delay, participants were cued to the light or dark side of the screen. When cued to the light side, the pupil constricted, and when cued to the dark side, the pupil dilated, suggesting that the PLR tracked covert shifts of attention. Similar covert shifts of attention were seen when the target stimuli remained onscreen and during a blank delay period, suggesting similar effects for attention to perceptual stimuli and attention to stimuli maintained in VWM. Furthermore, similar effects were demonstrated when participants were pre-cued or retro-cued to the prioritized location, suggesting that shifts of covert attention can occur both before and after target presentation. These results are consistent with prior research, suggesting an important role of covert shifts of attention during VWM maintenance and that the PLR can be used to track these covert shifts of attention.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Pupillary correlates of covert shifts of attention during working memory maintenance

Unsworth

Robison

2017

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…Initial support for a more dynamic view of working memory representations comes from studies demonstrating that attentional cues presented during a working memory delay (retro-cues) can strongly facilitate performance for cued items (Griffin and Nobre, 2003; Landman et al, 2003; for review, see Souza and Oberauer, 2016). To date, however, this work has focused predominantly on spatial and/or object-based attentional influences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, attentional cues presented during the retention interval (retro-cues) facilitate subsequent responses about the cued item (Griffin and Nobre, 2003; Landman et al, 2003; Pertzov et al, 2013; Souza and Oberauer, 2016). These studies have thus demonstrated that spatial and/or object-based attentional biases continue to operate during working memory and have led to the view that, among several items in working memory, a subset of the items (usually one), can be in a “prioritized state” (Cowan, 1988; Oberauer, 2002) (i.e., in the “focus of attention”).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal Expectations Guide Dynamic Prioritization in Visual Working Memory through Attenuated α Oscillations

2016

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Although working memory is generally considered a highly dynamic mnemonic store, popular laboratory tasks used to understand its psychological and neural mechanisms (such as change detection and continuous reproduction) often remain relatively “static,” involving the retention of a set number of items throughout a shared delay interval. In the current study, we investigated visual working memory in a more dynamic setting, and assessed the following: (1) whether internally guided temporal expectations can dynamically and reversibly prioritize individual mnemonic items at specific times at which they are deemed most relevant; and (2) the neural substrates that support such dynamic prioritization. Participants encoded two differently colored oriented bars into visual working memory to retrieve the orientation of one bar with a precision judgment when subsequently probed. To test for the flexible temporal control to access and retrieve remembered items, we manipulated the probability for each of the two bars to be probed over time, and recorded EEG in healthy human volunteers. Temporal expectations had a profound influence on working memory performance, leading to faster access times as well as more accurate orientation reproductions for items that were probed at expected times. Furthermore, this dynamic prioritization was associated with the temporally specific attenuation of contralateral α (8–14 Hz) oscillations that, moreover, predicted working memory access times on a trial-by-trial basis. We conclude that attentional prioritization in working memory can be dynamically steered by internally guided temporal expectations, and is supported by the attenuation of α oscillations in task-relevant sensory brain areas.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT In dynamic, everyday-like, environments, flexible goal-directed behavior requires that mental representations that are kept in an active (working memory) store are dynamic, too. We investigated working memory in a more dynamic setting than is conventional, and demonstrate that expectations about when mnemonic items are most relevant can dynamically and reversibly prioritize these items in time. Moreover, we uncover a neural substrate of such dynamic prioritization in contralateral visual brain areas and show that this substrate predicts working memory retrieval times on a trial-by-trial basis. This places the experimental study of working memory, and its neuronal underpinnings, in a more dynamic and ecologically valid context, and provides new insights into the neural implementation of attentional prioritization within working memory.

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“…The literature on spatial attention in VSTM (see overview in Souza & Oberauer, 2016) may provide inspiration for the mechanisms underlying feature-based retro-cueing. One set of accounts suggests that retro-cues protect visual information from time-based decay or interference.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Setting and changing feature priorities in visual short-term memory

et al. 2016

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Many everyday tasks require prioritizing some visual features over competing ones, both during the selection from the rich sensory input and while maintaining information in visual short-term memory (VSTM). Here, we show that observers can change priorities in VSTM when, initially, they attended to a different feature. Observers reported from memory the orientation of one of two spatially interspersed groups of black and white gratings. Using colored pre-cues (presented before stimulus onset) and retro-cues (presented after stimulus offset) predicting the to-be-reported group, we manipulated observers' feature priorities independently during stimulus encoding and maintenance, respectively. Valid pre-cues reliably increased observers' performance (reduced guessing, increased report precision) as compared to neutral ones; invalid pre-cues had the opposite effect. Valid retro-cues also consistently improved performance (by reducing random guesses), even if the unexpected group suddenly became relevant (invalid-valid condition). Thus, feature-based attention can reshape priorities in VSTM protecting information that would otherwise be forgotten.

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In search of the focus of attention in working memory: 13 years of the retro-cue effect

Cited by 371 publications

References 139 publications

Pupillary correlates of covert shifts of attention during working memory maintenance

Pupillary correlates of covert shifts of attention during working memory maintenance

Temporal Expectations Guide Dynamic Prioritization in Visual Working Memory through Attenuated α Oscillations

Setting and changing feature priorities in visual short-term memory

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