The role of attention in the maintenance of feature bindings in visual short-term memory.

Abstract

This study examined the role of attention in maintaining feature bindings in visual short-term memory (VSTM). In a change-detection paradigm, participants attempted to detect changes in the colors and orientations of multiple objects; the changes consisted of new feature values in a feature-memory condition and changes in how existing feature values were combined in a binding-memory condition. In the critical experiment, a demanding visual search task requiring sequential shifts of spatial attention was interposed during the delay interval of the change-detection task. If attention is more important for the maintenance of feature bindings than for the maintenance of unbound feature values, the attention-requiring search task should specifically disrupt performance in the binding-memory task. Contrary to this proposal, we found that memory for bindings and memory for features were equally impaired by the search task.

Visual working memory declines when more features must be remembered for each object

“…Moving beyond two features might have a more severe impact that is easier to detect experimentally even with large changes. This interpretation is consistent with the extant literature: The null effect of one versus two features per object has been replicated several times in experiments using large changes (Delvenne & Bruyer, 2004;Olson & Jiang, 2002;Riggs, Simpson, & Potts, 2011), although other experiments using equally large changes showed worse performance with two features than with one feature per object (Cowan, Blume, & Saults, 2012;Johnson, Hollingworth, & Luck, 2008; C. C. Morey & Bieler, 2012;Wheeler & Treisman, 2002;Wilson, Adamo, Barense, & Ferber, 2012). The effect of one versus two features appears to be fickle, suggesting that the effect is small on average, and probably modulated by as yet unidentified experimental details.…”

“…This fact rules out one major potential cause of failures to replicate: lack of power. Third, with regard to the comparison of single-feature and two-feature objects, the literature is already mixed, with some reports finding no difference (Delvenne & Bruyer, 2004;Olson & Jiang, 2002;Riggs et al, 2011;Vogel et al, 2001) and others finding worse performance when two (or more) features need to be remembered per object (Cowan et al, 2012;Johnson et al, 2008;C. C. Morey & Bieler, 2012;Stevanovski & Jolicoeur, 2011;Wheeler & Treisman, 2002;Wilson et al, 2012).…”

The maintenance of cross-domain associations in the episodic buffer.

“…Likewise, the binding of temporally or spatially separated features was not more dependent on central executive resources than the encoding of already bound features (Karlsen, Allen, Baddeley, & Hitch, 2010), not even when they were presented in different modalities (e.g., visually and auditorily; ). These findings were corroborated by a series of studies showing that the maintenance of feature bindings in visual short-term memory does not require attention over and above that required for maintaining individual features (Delvenne, Cleeremans, & Laloyaux, 2010;Gajewski & Brockmole, 2006;Johnson, Hollingworth, & Luck, 2008;Yeh, Yang, & Chiu, 2005). Baddeley, Allen, and Hitch (2011) concluded from a review of these studies that the perceptual system binds all features automatically and that binding does not appear to depend on the central executive.…”

The loss of short-term visual representations over time: Decay or temporal distinctiveness?

“…Luck & Vogel, 2013;Vogel, Woodman, & Luck, 2001), the role of attention (e.g. Johnson, Hollingworth, & Luck, 2008;Kuo, Stokes, & Nobre, 2012) and consolidation processes (e.g. Mance, Becker, & Liu, 2012;Vogel, Woodman, & Luck, 2006).…”