Retrospective and prospective prioritization in visual working memory

Allen, Richard J.; Atkinson, Amy L.

doi:10.31234/osf.io/4x8zu

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…There is, however, some evidence of a primacy advantage using the currently employed cued recall task following explicit instruction to prioritise memory for the first conjunction in the list (Atkinson, Berry, et al, 2018;Hitch et al, 2018;Hu et al, 2014Hu et al, , 2016 although see null effect at serial position 1 reported by Allen et al, 2020). Indeed, participants can prioritise more valuable information in working memory resulting in improved recall for high value items across all serial positions (Allen et al, 2020;Allen & Atkinson, 2021;Atkinson et al, 2020; with prioritisation effects observed also in children and older adult samples, Allen et al, 2020;Atkinson et al, 2019). This memory facilitation for high value items is typically offset by memory decrements to the lower value items in the list.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intentional and incidental odour-colour binding in working memory

Johnson

Allen

2022

Memory

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The question of how features are bound together in working memory has become a topic of much research in recent years. However, this is typically focused on visual and/or auditory stimuli. This study applies established feature binding procedures to investigate odour binding in working memory. Across three experiments, memory for intentionally and incidentally formed odour-colour pairings was tested. Experiment 1 showed that following explicit instruction to remember the odour-colour combinations, young adults can recall lists of 3odour-colour pairings at levels above that of chance and exhibit a recency advantage for the last pairing in the list. In Experiment 2 participants were asked to prioritise the first pairing in the list or treat all list items equally. We observed only limited evidence of prioritisation affecting the serial position function. Experiment 3 explored whether odour-colour binding can be incidentally formed. Using a yes/no recognition procedure, accuracy did not differ for positive test probes that were presented in the same (bound) or different (unbound) colour to encoding (although some weak recency effects were shown with confidence ratings). Taken together, these findings suggest that odour-colour bindings can be formed in working memory, but functionality may be limited compared to that of visual feature binding.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intentional and incidental odour-colour binding in working memory

Johnson

Allen

2022

Memory

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“…Studies using reward-based prioritization have traditionally introduced the reward manipulation before encoding. One way to do so is by presenting a reward pattern at the beginning of the trial (e.g., Allen & Atkinson, 2021;Allen & Ueno, 2018;Atkinson et al, 2022).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using these types of reward-based manipulations of priority in working memory, memory performance has been shown to be better for high-reward items, compared to low-reward items (e.g., Allen & Atkinson, 2021;Allen & Ueno, 2018;Atkinson et al, 2022, associating reward values to item locations; Atkinson et al, 2018;Hitch et al, 2018;Hu et al, 2014Hu et al, , 2016 associating reward values to serial positions). When perceptual interference is shown between encoding and test, high-reward items have been found to suffer more from memory loss due to the presence of perceptual interference than low-reward items, showing prioritized information to be particularly vulnerable to perceptual interference (e.g., Allen & Ueno, 2018, associating reward values to item locations; Hitch et al, 2018;Hu et al, 2014Hu et al, , 2016, associating reward values to serial positions).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distractor susceptibility in visual working memory: No evidence for particularly vulnerable mnemonic representations in the focus of attention

Vergauwe,

Hautekiet,

Langerock

2023

Preprint

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Selectively focusing attention allows us to prioritize specific information within working memory. The current study investigates the consequences of focused attention for prioritized information in visual working memory. Specifically, in three behavioral experiments, we study how focused attention modulates the distractor susceptibility of mental representations that are the object of focused attention, using different prioritization modes (spontaneous, cued-based, and reward-based prioritization). When we relied on spontaneous prioritization in Experiments 1a and 1b, our findings indicated that information in the focus of attention is as vulnerable to perceptual interference as information represented elsewhere in working memory, and this did not change over time. When prioritization was externally-guided in Experiment 2, we found information in the focus of attention to be either protected from perceptual interference (when using cue-based prioritization) or as vulnerable as information represented elsewhere in working memory (when using reward-based prioritization), regardless of when the priority signal was presented (before, during, or after encoding). Thus, overall, distractor susceptibility of information in working memory was revealed to be either reduced (when cue-based) or unaffected (when spontaneous or reward-based) by prioritization, but never increased in the current study. Theoretical implications for the focus of attention are discussed.

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“…But even representations already in VWM can be flexibly updated according to changes in task relevance during maintenance. While information that is no longer important can be removed from memory (e.g., Souza et al, 2014;Williams et al, 2013), maintenance in different representational states established by the allocation of attention can reflect more graded differences in relevance (e.g., Gunseli et al, 2015;LaRocque et al, 2014;Stokes et al, 2020;van Moorselaar et al, 2015)-as established, for instance, by the likelihoods of items to be tested, by the requirements of an upcoming action, or by item value (e.g., Allen & Atkinson, 2021;Heuer et al, 2020;Heuer & Schubö, 2018;. Research on selective processing during maintenance has been fuelled by the introduction of the retrocue paradigm (Griffin & Nobre, 2003;Landman et al, 2003), in which cues presented during the retention interval of a VWM task indicate one or several item(s) as more likely to be subsequently tested (reviewed in Souza & Oberauer, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A direct comparison of attentional orienting to spatial and temporal positions in visual working memory

Heuer

Rolfs

2021

Psychon Bull Rev

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Different visual attributes effectively guide attention to specific items in visual working memory (VWM), ensuring that particularly important memory contents are readily available. Predictable temporal structures contribute to this efficient use of VWM: items are prospectively prioritized when they are expected to be needed. Occasionally, however, visual events only gain relevance through their timing after they have passed. We investigated retrospective attentional orienting based on temporal position by directly comparing it with orienting to spatial locations, which is typically considered the most powerful selection mechanism. In a colour-change-detection task, in which items appeared sequentially at different locations, symbolic number cues validly indicated the temporal or spatial location of the upcoming probe item either before encoding (precues; Experiment 1) or during maintenance (retrocues; Experiments 1–3). Temporal and spatial cues were physically identical and only differed in their mapping onto either temporal or spatial positions. Predictive cues yielded cueing benefits (i.e., higher accuracy and shorter reaction times) as compared with neutral cues, with larger benefits for precues than for retrocues. Importantly, spatial and temporal cueing benefits did not differ. Equivalent retrocueing benefits were also observed across different cue-probe intervals and irrespective of whether spatial or temporal position was used as retrieval cue, indicating that items were directly bound to temporal position and not prioritized via a space-based mechanism. These findings show that spatial and temporal properties can be used equally well to flexibly prioritise representations held in VWM and they highlight the functional similarities of space and time in VWM.

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Retrospective and prospective prioritization in visual working memory

Cited by 9 publications

References 37 publications

Intentional and incidental odour-colour binding in working memory

Intentional and incidental odour-colour binding in working memory

Distractor susceptibility in visual working memory: No evidence for particularly vulnerable mnemonic representations in the focus of attention

A direct comparison of attentional orienting to spatial and temporal positions in visual working memory

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