The Focus of Attention in Visual Working Memory: Protection of Focused Representations and Its Individual Variation

Heuer, Anna; Schubö, Anna

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0154228

Cited by 33 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 75 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…An alternative explanation for the emergence of the CDA is that it reflects a boost for the cued item instead of signaling the loss of the non-cued item. 85 Given that the CDA reflects storage of the items in the contralateral side 54,68 , an impact on the storage of the cued item should be reflected on the signal contralateral to the cued item. However, contrary to this alternative explanation, the retro-cue reliability affected the signal contralateral to the non-cued item.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unattended but actively stored: EEG dynamics reveal a dissociation between selective attention and storage in working memory

Günseli

Fahrenfort

Moorselaar

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Selective attention plays a prominent role in prioritizing information in working memory (WM), improving performance for attended representations. However, the consequences of selection for unattended WM representations are less clear, with mixed findings regarding information loss for unattended items. Here we tested the theory that within WM, selectively attending to an item and the decision to stop storing another item are independent mechanisms. We recorded EEG while participants performed a WM recall task in which the item most likely to be tested was cued retrospectively. By manipulating retro-cue reliability (i.e. the ratio of valid to invalid cue trials) we varied the incentive to retain uncued items. The cued item was initially attended equally following highly reliable and less reliable cues, as indexed by contralateral alpha (8-14 Hz) power suppression. Non-cued items were dropped from WM, as indexed by contralateral delay activity (CDA), but only for highly reliable cues. Later in the retention interval this pattern reversed. Selective attention was sustained only following highly reliably cues, while uncued items were dropped also for less reliable cues. These results show that attention and storage in WM are distinct processes that can behave differently depending on the relative importance of WM representations.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unattended but actively stored: EEG dynamics reveal a dissociation between selective attention and storage in working memory

Günseli

Fahrenfort

Moorselaar

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…First, whichever item is presented first may influence the representation of the second item more than the second item influences the first item. Second, it is possible that attentional mechanisms could be allocated to a given item to protect it from distortion by the other item (Matsukura, Luck, & Vecera, 2007; Makovski & Pertzov, 2015; Heuer & Schubö, 2016). Experiments 2 and 3 of the present study examined this issue by experimentally manipulating the attentional priority of each item.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interactions between visual working memory representations

Bae

Luck

2017

Atten Percept Psychophys

107

148

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We investigated whether the representations of different objects are maintained independently in working memory or interact with each other. Observers were shown two sequentially presented orientations and required to reproduce each orientation after a delay. The sequential presentation minimized perceptual interactions so that we could isolate interactions between memory representations per se. We found that similar orientations were repelled from each other whereas dissimilar orientations were attracted to each other. In addition, when one of the items was given greater attentional priority by means of a cue, the representation of the high-priority item was not influenced very much by the orientation of the low-priority item, but the representation of the low-priority item was strongly influenced by the orientation of the high-priority item. This indicates that attention modulates the interactions between working memory representations. In addition, errors in the reported orientations of the two objects were positively correlated under some conditions, suggesting that representations of distinct objects may become grouped together in memory. Together, these results demonstrate that WM representations are not independent but instead interact with each other in a manner that depends on attentional priority.

show abstract

“…Third, the effects of endogenous and exogenous cues in the memory domain are truly similar after excluding the above two reasons. Nevertheless, even if the endogenous and exogenous cues produce similar behavioral results in the memory domain, they may induce different neural processes and involve different neural networks, seeing that neural networks induced by them in the perceptual domain are distinctive (Buschman & Miller, 2000; Chica, Bartolomeo, & Lupiáñez, 2013; Carrasco, 2011; Corbetta & Shulman, 2002) and previous studies indicate similarities between the neural circuits implemented in orienting attention towards representations in perception and memory (Awh & Jonides, 2001; Heuer & Schubö, 2016; Lepsien & Nobre, 2006; Myers, Walther, Wallis, Stokes, & Nobre, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%