Attention and binding in visual working memory: Two forms of attention and two kinds of buffer storage

Abstract

We review our research on the episodic buffer in the multicomponent model of working memory (Baddeley, 2000), making explicit the influence of Anne Treisman's work on the way our research has developed. The crucial linking theme concerns binding, whereby the individual features of an episode are combined as integrated representations. We summarize a series of experiments on visual working memory that investigated the retention of feature bindings and individual features. The effects of cognitive load, perceptual distraction, prioritization, serial position, and their interactions form a coherent pattern. We interpret our findings as demonstrating contrasting roles of externally driven and internally driven attentional processes, as well as a distinction between visual buffer storage and the focus of attention. Our account has strong links with Treisman's concept of focused attention and aligns with a number of contemporary approaches to visual working memory. Keywords Attention. Working memory. Visual working memory Over 60 years have passed since Broadbent (1958) first presented a model linking short-term memory and attention. However, early investigation tended to concentrate on the auditory-verbal domain whereas in the visual domain, attention and short-term memory were typically studied separately. One development in bringing these perspectives together was the use of perceptually based change detection methods to investigate the capacity of visual working memory (Luck & Vogel, 1997). A parallel development was growing awareness of working memory among researchers studying attention in visual perception (e.g.

Visuospatial bootstrapping: spatialized displays enhance digit and nonword sequence learning

“…One possibility is that this is caused by the extensive repetition of the same processes that underlie bootstrapping in immediate serial recall. Another is that the effect occurs to some extent within the associative processes underlying LTM—a view consistent with the idea that WM closely interacts with LTM, 24–27 or represents activation within LTM 31,40 . Presently, there are no data to weigh conclusively on this important question.…”

“…Verbal interference 17 and interference to set‐switching processes 19 do not seem to reduce the bootstrapping effect, while spatial interference is associated with its absence. Given that it seems to be relatively independent of higher‐level resources, it has been argued that bootstrapping can be thought of as being one function of the episodic buffer, a component of the WM model that was conceived to account for processes mediating between different long‐term memory (LTM) and STM systems as part of the process of encoding episodic information in memory 25–27 . The multicomponent model of WM has some commonality with Paivio's dual coding theory (DCT) 28 ; VSB is also consistent with dual coding.…”

“…Bootstrapping effects have been replicated frequently. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] VSB has been interpreted in terms of the multicomponent [24][25][26][27] model of WM as occurring when a visual presentation contains information that can be used to support-"bootstrap"the activities of phonological STM. Verbal interference 17 and interference to set-switching processes 19 do not seem to reduce the bootstrapping effect, while spatial interference is associated with its absence.…”

Retrospective and prospective prioritization in visual working memory

“…The effectiveness of strategic retrospective direction of attention is dependent on the item being available and accessible. Recency effects were apparent across all value conditions, perhaps reflecting a greater likelihood of storage within the FoA (Hitch et al, 2020) or increased strength of memory representation (Donkin & Nosofsky, 2012;Niklaus et al, 2019) at the point at which values are allocated. In either case, this final item would be more accessible within WM and therefore easier to prioritize.…”

“…This has been observed in visual (Allen & Ueno, 2018;Hu et al, 2014) and verbal tasks (Atkinson et al, 2020), and in typically developing children (Atkinson et al, 2019) and healthy older adults (Allen et al, 2020). At a broad level, it has been claimed to represent the strategic prioritization of high value items within the focus of attention (FoA) within WM (Hitch et al, 2020). Thus, items can be maintained in a more accessible privileged state, though with the trade-off of costs to other items that are not being prioritized.…”