Saccadic selection does not eliminate attribute amnesia.

Abstract

Attribute amnesia (Chen & Wyble, 2015, 2016) demonstrates that we may not always be able to spontaneously retrieve a simple attribute of a visual object (e.g., its color) for conscious report, even though the object had just been the target in a visual task. Attribute amnesia has been suggested to reflect a lack of consolidation of the task-irrelevant attribute in visual working memory. Here we tested whether saccadic selection eliminates or attenuates attribute amnesia. Saccade targets have been shown to be preferentially encoded into visual working memory and may therefore be spared. We used simple color pop-out displays, asking participants to indicate the location of the color singleton letter target on each trial either by keypress or by making a saccade toward it. After a couple of trials and unannounced to the participants, we asked for the color and identity of the last target letter on a surprise trial. We found that saccade targets were not spared from attribute amnesia: Participants were as bad in correctly reporting the color in the saccade as in the keypress condition. For letter identity, the effect was attenuated but not abolished when the target was foveated for a short period of time. We argue that the current results do not refute an obligatory coupling between saccadic selection and encoding in visual working memory. However, the encoded information may not necessarily be stored in a manner that is robust enough to persist in the face of a surprise question.

Attribute amnesia can be modulated by foveal presentation and the pre-allocation of endogenous spatial attention

“…Note that "validity" refers to the between-subjects variable "validity on surprise trial" (i.e., the different rows do not reflect performance on valid vs. invalid pre-or post-surprise trials, but show the proportion of participants with a correct response in the respective group) the Bayes factors suggested only weak evidence in favor of a difference between the surprise and the first post-surprise trial. Numerically, around 60% of participants were correct on the surprise trial, which is a slightly higher percentage than typically observed in attribute amnesia studies (Born et al, 2019;Chen & Wyble, 2015Jiang et al, 2016;Swan et al, 2017), but roughly corresponds to the percentage of participants being able to report the irrelevant information in the studies by Eitam and colleagues (Eitam et al, 2015;Eitam et al, 2013). It is possible that the effect was attenuated by the cue, for instance by providing an alerting signal that may automatically activate attentional resources (possibly irrespective of location).…”

“…As mentioned, based on previous results (Born et al, in 2019;Chen & Wyble, 2015, we had not expected an asymmetry between color and shape (but see Rock et al, 1992). Note also that in other studies with comparatively simple color pop-out displays, the majority of participants were not able to indicate the last target color in a surprise question (Born et al, 2019;Chen & Wyble, 2015). In these studies, the target was likewise presented parafoveally and the presented distractors were either black or gray, such that on each trial, the target was the only colored object.…”

“…Interestingly, foveal presentation or spatial pre-cuing may facilitate an already very easy task even further to a task with minimal perceptual and cognitive demands. In contrast, consolidation may not be guaranteed by visual pop-out (Born et al, 2019;Chen & Wyble, 2015) or by the mere absence of distractors when the target is presented parafoveally (see current experiments). Importantly, ceiling performance in the primary task or in control trials when both attributes are expected to be queried is clearly not a good predictor of whether irrelevant attributes may be represented in visual working memory or not on surprise memory tests.…”

“…In these studies, the target was likewise presented parafoveally and the presented distractors were either black or gray, such that on each trial, the target was the only colored object. In the case of our own previous study (Born et al, 2019), the target was not masked and presented for 500 ms (Experiment 2), just as in the current experiments. These previous studies demonstrate that parafoveally presented color information does not always result in a robust representation available for conscious report in a surprise question.…”

“…The timing of stimuli, the presentation of masks and distractors, the size of the stimuli, the primary task (localization vs. report of color or shape), and the locus of presentation (at fixation vs. in the parafoveal region) were different. Recently, we have demonstrated that the mask does not explain the discrepancy, because attribute amnesia was observed with unmasked stimuli shown for 500 ms (Born, Puntiroli, Jordan, & Kerzel, 2019; see also Chen & Wyble, 2015;Exp. 1b).…”