Mnemonic attention in analogy to perceptual attention: harmony but not uniformity

Abstract

We have no known conflict of interest to disclose. We thank Yichen Wang, Yuhang Li and Yajing Wang for experimental assistance.

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

“…This parallels prior studies that employed perceptual memoranda, which have shown larger RCEs on reaction times for voluntary compared to involuntary attention (Shimi et al, 2014;van Ede et al, 2020; but see Berryhill et al, 2012;Han & Ku, 2022). The present study extends these findings by showing that this voluntary advantage persists even when the effects of involuntary attention are ruled out, given the independent assessment of both attentional types, underscoring the substantial potential of voluntary attention in prioritizing internal contents for retrieval.…”

“…Fourthly, the present RCE persisted irrespective of the type of WM contents, which indicates voluntary mechanisms of retrieval operate regardless of the quality and nature of the WM representation. Lastly, regarding involuntary attention, it is important to note that two studies (Han & Ku, 2022;Shimi et al, 2014) evidenced RCEs on reaction times by employing peripheral retro-cues. In contrast, in van Ede and colleagues' study (2020) and the present investigation, no such effects of involuntary attention were observed by using central retro-cues.…”

“…However, until now, whether the analogous distinction between involuntary and voluntary attention operates within the contents of WM has been largely unexplored, and most researchers have relied on voluntary retro-cues uniquely (Camos et al, 2018). Nevertheless, some studies have investigated the effects of involuntary and voluntary attention on WM contents employing retro-cueing paradigms (Berryhill et al, 2012;Fu et al, 2022;Gunseli et al, 2015Gunseli et al, , 2019Han & Ku, 2022;Han et al, 2023;Shimi et al, 2014;van Ede et al, 2020). Generally, through recognition and delay estimation tasks, these studies have shown that voluntary attention elicits both benefits and costs on accuracy and/or reaction times (RTs), when measured.…”

“…Notably, previous studies comparing voluntary and involuntary attentional mechanisms have employed low-level representations such as colored squares (e.g., Fu et al, 2022), oriented bars (e.g., Günseli et al, 2019), and gratings (e.g., Han & Ku, 2022). However, high-level representations, such as real-world stimuli, have remained unexplored.…”

“…While both central and peripheral retro-cues could be used in this study, central retro-cues were chosen to avoid confounding the effects of eccentricity and voluntariness. In the case of involuntary attention, a low-reliability arrow-shaped retro-cue was employed to automatically orient spatial attention (e.g., Fu et al, 2022;Han & Ku, 2022). Conversely, for voluntary attention, high-reliability arrow-shaped retro-cues consistently pointed to all item directions, with the validity determined by the color of the arrows, indicating the specific item to attend to (only one colored arrow being task-relevant, as illustrated by Lasaponara et al, 2011).…”