The object as the unit of interaction between visual working memory and visual attention

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the unit of interaction between visual working memory (VWM) and attention. Therefore, we examined two opposing hypotheses: (a) the unit of interaction is a Boolean map, which is a data format that can contain only one within-dimension feature (e.g., “red” or “circle”; Boolean-map-unit hypothesis); and (b) the unit of interaction is an object (object-unit hypothesis). In two experiments, participants held in their VWM two colors from either one or two objects, or one color, and then performed a search task that sometimes contained a distractor with a memory-matching color. The results showed that the attentional capture by two different colors encoded from one integrated object was equivalent to that of a single color, and was much stronger than that of two colors from separate objects, which supports the object-unit hypothesis. These findings have crucial implications for understanding the architecture of interaction between VWM and attention.