scholarly journals Visual working memory modulates low-level saccade target selection: Evidence from rapidly generated saccades in the global effect paradigm

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 4-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Hollingworth ◽  
M. Matsukura ◽  
S. J. Luck
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Target Selection ◽  
Saccade Target ◽  
Global Effect ◽  
Low Level

scholarly journals Dynamic interactions between visual working memory and saccade target selection

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 9-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Schneegans ◽  
J. P. Spencer ◽  
G. Schoner ◽  
S. Hwang ◽  
A. Hollingworth
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Target Selection ◽  
Saccade Target ◽  
Dynamic Interactions

Oculomotor selection underlies feature retention in visual working memory

2016 ◽  
Vol 115 (2) ◽  
pp. 1071-1076 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina M. Hanning ◽  
Donatas Jonikaitis ◽  
Heiner Deubel ◽  
Martin Szinte
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Target Selection ◽  
Spatial Task ◽  
Saccade Target ◽  
Task Relevance ◽  
Feature Representations ◽  
Feature Based ◽  
Target Locations

Oculomotor selection, spatial task relevance, and visual working memory (WM) are described as three processes highly intertwined and sustained by similar cortical structures. However, because task-relevant locations always constitute potential saccade targets, no study so far has been able to distinguish between oculomotor selection and spatial task relevance. We designed an experiment that allowed us to dissociate in humans the contribution of task relevance, oculomotor selection, and oculomotor execution to the retention of feature representations in WM. We report that task relevance and oculomotor selection lead to dissociable effects on feature WM maintenance. In a first task, in which an object's location was encoded as a saccade target, its feature representations were successfully maintained in WM, whereas they declined at nonsaccade target locations. Likewise, we observed a similar WM benefit at the target of saccades that were prepared but never executed. In a second task, when an object's location was marked as task relevant but constituted a nonsaccade target (a location to avoid), feature representations maintained at that location did not benefit. Combined, our results demonstrate that oculomotor selection is consistently associated with WM, whereas task relevance is not. This provides evidence for an overlapping circuitry serving saccade target selection and feature-based WM that can be dissociated from processes encoding task-relevant locations.

scholarly journals Visual Working Memory Load Disrupts Template-guided Attentional Selection during Visual Search

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 1902-1915 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Berggren ◽  
Martin Eimer
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Memory Load ◽  
Target Selection ◽  
Target Color ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Single Feature ◽  
Single Target ◽  
Candidate Target

Mental representations of target features (attentional templates) control the selection of candidate target objects in visual search. The question where templates are maintained remains controversial. We employed the N2pc component as an electrophysiological marker of template-guided target selection to investigate whether and under which conditions templates are held in visual working memory (vWM). In two experiments, participants memorized one or four shapes (low vs. high vWM load) before either being tested on their memory or performing a visual search task. When targets were defined by one of two possible colors (e.g., red or green), target N2pcs were delayed with high vWM load. This suggests that the maintenance of multiple shapes in vWM interfered with the activation of color-specific search templates, supporting the hypothesis that these templates are held in vWM. This was the case despite participants always searching for the same two target colors. In contrast, the speed of target selection in a task where a single target color remained relevant throughout was unaffected by concurrent load, indicating that a constant search template for a single feature may be maintained outside vWM in a different store. In addition, early visual N1 components to search and memory test displays were attenuated under high load, suggesting a competition between external and internal attention. The size of this attenuation predicted individual vWM performance. These results provide new electrophysiological evidence for impairment of top–down attentional control mechanisms by high vWM load, demonstrating that vWM is involved in the guidance of attentional target selection during search.

scholarly journals Transsaccadic integration benefits are not limited to the saccade target

2019 ◽  
Vol 122 (4) ◽  
pp. 1491-1501
Author(s):  
Emma E. M. Stewart ◽  
Alexander C. Schütz
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Saccade Target ◽  
General Mechanism ◽  
Spatial Profile ◽  
Initial Fixation ◽  
Perceptual Performance ◽  
Transsaccadic Integration ◽  
Spatial Specificity

Across saccades, humans can integrate the low-resolution presaccadic information of an upcoming saccade target with the high-resolution postsaccadic information. There is converging evidence to suggest that transsaccadic integration occurs at the saccade target. However, given divergent evidence on the spatial specificity of related mechanisms such as attention, visual working memory, and remapping, it is unclear whether integration is also possible at locations other than the saccade target. We tested the spatial profile of transsaccadic integration, by testing perceptual performance at six locations around the saccade target and between the saccade target and initial fixation. Results show that integration benefits do not differ between the saccade target and surrounding locations. Transsaccadic integration benefits are not specific to the saccade target and can occur at other locations when they are behaviorally relevant, although there is a trend for worse performance for the location above initial fixation compared with those in the direction of the saccade. This suggests that transsaccadic integration may be a more general mechanism used to reconcile task-relevant pre- and postsaccadic information at attended locations other than the saccade target. NEW & NOTEWORTHY This study shows that integration of pre- and postsaccadic information across saccades is not restricted to the saccade target. We found performance benefits of transsaccadic integration at attended locations other than the saccade target, and these benefits did not differ from those found at the saccade target. This suggests that transsaccadic integration may be a more general mechanism used to reconcile pre- and postsaccadic information at task-relevant locations.

scholarly journals Semantic knowledge influences visual working memory in adults and children

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. e0241110
Author(s):  
Ariel Starr ◽  
Mahesh Srinivasan ◽  
Silvia A. Bunge
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Semantic Knowledge ◽  
Visual Features ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Abstract Stimuli ◽  
Familiar Objects

We can retain only a portion of the visual information that we encounter within our visual working memory. Which factors influence how much information we can remember? Recent studies have demonstrated that the capacity of visual working memory is influenced by the type of information to be remembered and is greater for real-world objects than for abstract stimuli. One explanation for this effect is that the semantic knowledge associated with real-world objects makes them easier to maintain in working memory. Previous studies have indirectly tested this proposal and led to inconsistent conclusions. Here, we directly tested whether semantic knowledge confers a benefit for visual working memory by using familiar and unfamiliar real-world objects. We found a mnemonic benefit for familiar objects in adults and children between the ages of 4 and 9 years. Control conditions ruled out alternative explanations, namely the possibility that the familiar objects could be more easily labeled or that there were differences in low-level visual features between the two types of objects. Together, these findings demonstrate that semantic knowledge influences visual working memory, which suggests that the capacity of visual working memory is not fixed but instead fluctuates depending on what has to be remembered.

Cross-fixation interactions of orientations suggest high-to-low-level decoding in visual working memory

2022 ◽  
Vol 190 ◽  
pp. 107963
Author(s):  
Long Luu ◽  
Mingsha Zhang ◽  
Misha Tsodyks ◽  
Ning Qian
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Low Level
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