scholarly journals Task-Irrelevant Features in Visual Working Memory Influence Covert Attention: Evidence from a Partial Report Task

Vision ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca M. Foerster ◽  
Werner X. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Shape Matching ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Covert Attention ◽  
Partial Report ◽  
Target Color ◽  
Color Target ◽  
Irrelevant Color ◽  
Task Irrelevant

Selecting a target based on a representation in visual working memory (VWM) affords biasing covert attention towards objects with memory-matching features. Recently, we showed that even task-irrelevant features of a VWM template bias attention. Specifically, when participants had to saccade to a cued shape, distractors sharing the cue’s search-irrelevant color captured the eyes. While a saccade always aims at one target location, multiple locations can be attended covertly. Here, we investigated whether covert attention is captured similarly as the eyes. In our partial report task, each trial started with a shape-defined search cue, followed by a fixation cross. Next, two colored shapes, each including a letter, appeared left and right from fixation, followed by masks. The letter inside that shape matching the preceding cue had to be reported. In Experiment 1, either target, distractor, both, or no object matched the cue’s irrelevant color. Target-letter reports were most frequent in target-match trials and least frequent in distractor-match trials. Irrelevant cue and target color never matched in Experiment 2. Still, participants reported the distractor more often to the target’s disadvantage, when cue and distractor color matched. Thus, irrelevant features of a VWM template can influence covert attention in an involuntarily object-based manner when searching for trial-wise varying targets.

scholarly journals Dissociating Reward- and Attention-driven Biasing of Global Feature-based Selection in Human Visual Cortex

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haydee G. Garcia-Lazaro ◽  
Mandy V. Bartsch ◽  
Carsten N. Boehler ◽  
Ruth M. Krebs ◽  
Sarah E. Donohue ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Target Selection ◽  
Target Color ◽  
Selective Area ◽  
Early Visual Cortex ◽  
Feature Based ◽  
Irrelevant Color ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Attention Demands

Objects that promise rewards are prioritized for visual selection. The way this prioritization shapes sensory processing in visual cortex, however, is debated. It has been suggested that rewards motivate stronger attentional focusing, resulting in a modulation of sensory selection in early visual cortex. An open question is whether those reward-driven modulations would be independent of similar modulations indexing the selection of attended features that are not associated with reward. Here, we use magnetoencephalography in human observers to investigate whether the modulations indexing global color-based selection in visual cortex are separable for target- and (monetary) reward-defining colors. To assess the underlying global color-based activity modulation, we compare the event-related magnetic field response elicited by a color probe in the unattended hemifield drawn either in the target color, the reward color, both colors, or a neutral task-irrelevant color. To test whether target and reward relevance trigger separable modulations, we manipulate attention demands on target selection while keeping reward-defining experimental parameters constant. Replicating previous observations, we find that reward and target relevance produce almost indistinguishable gain modulations in ventral extratriate cortex contralateral to the unattended color probe. Importantly, increasing attention demands on target discrimination increases the response to the target-defining color, whereas the response to the rewarded color remains largely unchanged. These observations indicate that, although task relevance and reward influence the very same feature-selective area in extrastriate visual cortex, the associated modulations are largely independent.

scholarly journals No evidence for binding of items to task-irrelevant backgrounds in visual working memory

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (7) ◽  
pp. 1144-1159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Udale ◽  
Simon Farrell ◽  
Christopher Kent
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Task Irrelevant

scholarly journals Spatially Selective Alpha Oscillations Reveal Moment-by-Moment Trade-offs between Working Memory and Attention

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 256-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk van Moorselaar ◽  
Joshua J. Foster ◽  
David W. Sutterer ◽  
Jan Theeuwes ◽  
Christian N. L. Olivers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Covert Attention ◽  
Attention Task ◽  
Memory And Attention ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Oscillatory Mechanism

Current theories assume a functional role for covert attention in the maintenance of spatial information in working memory. Consistent with this view, both the locus of attention and positions stored in working memory can be decoded based on the topography of oscillatory alpha-band (8–12 Hz) activity on the scalp. Thus far, however, alpha modulation has been studied in isolation for covert attention and working memory tasks. Here, we applied an inverted spatial encoding model in combination with EEG to study the temporal dynamics of spatially specific alpha activity during a task that required observers to visually select a target location while maintaining another independently varying location in working memory. During the memory delay period, alpha-based spatial tuning functions shifted from the position stored in working memory to the covertly attended position and back again after the attention task was completed. The findings provide further evidence for a common oscillatory mechanism in both the selection and the maintenance of relevant spatial visual information and demonstrate the dynamic trade-off in prioritization between two spatial tasks.

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.

Implicit Knowledge of Target Location Biases Encoding Into Visual Working Memory

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Awh ◽  
Akina Umemoto ◽  
Miranda Scolari ◽  
Edward Vogel
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Implicit Knowledge

EXPRESS: Automatically binding relevant and irrelevant features in visual working memory

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110539
Author(s):  
Chenxiao Zhao ◽  
Xinyu Li ◽  
Michel Failing ◽  
Benchi Wang
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Spatial Frequency ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Storage Space ◽  
Memory Enhancement ◽  
Irrelevant Feature ◽  
Object Based ◽  
Task Irrelevant

It is generally assumed that, in order to save storage space, features are stored as integrated objects in visual working memory (VWM). Although such an object-based account does not always hold because features can be processed in parallel, a previous study has shown that different features can be automatically bound with their locations (task-irrelevant feature) into an integrated unit, resulting in improved memory performance (Wang, Cao, Theeuwes, Olivers, & Wang, 2016). The present study was designed to further explore this phenomenon by investigating whether other features, that are not spatial in origin, can act as the binding cue to form such automatical binding. To test this, we used three different features as binding cues (i.e., color, spatial frequency, and shape) over multiple separate experiments. The results consistently showed that when two features shared the same binding cue, memory performance was better relative to when each of those features had their own binding cue. We conclude, that any task-irrelevant feature can act as a binding cue to automatically bind with task-relevant features even across different objects, resulting in memory enhancement.

scholarly journals Does high memory load kick task-irrelevant information out of visual working memory?

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Yin ◽  
Jifan Zhou ◽  
Haokui Xu ◽  
Junying Liang ◽  
Zaifeng Gao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Memory Load ◽  
Irrelevant Information ◽  
Task Irrelevant

scholarly journals Object-based grouping benefits without integrated feature representations in visual working memory

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siyi Chen ◽  
Anna Kocsis ◽  
Heinrich R. Liesefeld ◽  
Hermann J. Müller ◽  
Markus Conci
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Memory Representation ◽  
Feature Representations ◽  
Color Features ◽  
Object Based ◽  
Orientation Feature ◽  
Independent Features ◽  
Irrelevant Color

Abstract Visual working memory (VWM) is typically considered to represent complete objects—that is, separate parts of an object are maintained as bound objects. Yet it remains unclear whether and how the features of disparate parts are integrated into a whole-object memory representation. Using a change detection paradigm, the present study investigated whether VWM performance varies as a function of grouping strength for features that either determine the grouped object (orientation) or that are not directly grouping relevant (color). Our results showed a large grouping benefit for grouping-relevant orientation features and, additionally, a much smaller, albeit reliable, benefit for grouping-irrelevant color features when both were potentially task relevant. By contrast, when color was the only task-relevant feature, no grouping benefit from the orientation feature was revealed both under lower or relatively high demands for precision. Together, these results indicate that different features of an object are stored independently in VWM; and an emerging, higher-order grouping structure does not automatically lead to an integrated representation of all available features of an object. Instead, an object benefit depends on the specific task demands, which may generate a linked, task-dependent representation of independent features.

scholarly journals Feature binding in visual working memory is disrupted by task-irrelevant changes in object features.

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. 1069
Author(s):  
Andrea Bocincova ◽  
Amanda van Lamsweerde ◽  
Jeffrey Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Feature Binding ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Object Features
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