Do the contents of working memory capture attention? Yes, but cognitive control matters.

Han, Suk Won; Kim, Min Shik

doi:10.1037/a0016452

Cited by 110 publications

(154 citation statements)

References 47 publications

(83 reference statements)

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“…Alternatively, some form of top-down saccadic inhibition could also be playing a role, which could begin during the search preview screen and keep the eyes at fixation until the target is localized, suppressing fixations to nontarget objects. This is consistent with the cognitivecontrol hypotheses of Woodman and Luck (2007) and Han and Kim (2009). Models of saccade programming must take into account signal timing, signal strength, and cognitivecontrol factors in order to accurately model the deployment of the eyes in a visual search task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

The interaction between memorized objects and abrupt onsets in oculomotor capture

Wong

Peterson

2011

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Recent evidence has been found for a source of task-irrelevant oculomotor capture (defined as when a salient event draws the eyes away from a primary task) that originates from working memory. An object memorized for a nonsearch task can capture the eyes during search. Here, an experiment was conducted that generated interactions between the presence of a memorized object (a colored disk) with the abrupt onset of a new object during visual search. The goal was to compare memory-driven oculomotor capture to oculomotor capture caused by an abrupt onset. This has implications for saccade programming theories, which have little to say about saccades that are influenced by object working memory. Results showed that memorized objects capture the eyes at nearly the same rate as abrupt onsets. When the abrupt onset and a memorized color coincide in the same object, this combination leads to even greater oculomotor capture. Finally, latencies support the competitive integration model: Shorter saccade latencies were found when the memorized color combined with the onset captured the eyes, as compared to either color or onset only. Longer latencies were also found when the color and onset occurred in the same display but were spatially separated.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

The interaction between memorized objects and abrupt onsets in oculomotor capture

Wong

Peterson

2011

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…Thus, targets and distractors are in a state of mutual inhibition until the system can resolve the point at which processing resources should be preferentially allocated. There is now much evidence showing that task set establishes a strong top-down bias influencing the outcome of this process (Chelazzi, Duncan, Miller, & Desimone, 1998;Downing, 2000;Han & Kim, 2009;Olivers, Meijer, & Theeuwes, 2006;Woodman & Luck, 2007). Thus, it may be that the top-down attentional set directed towards colour targets is sufficient to counteract any advantage that learnt biases might contribute towards competitive interactions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automaticity and cognitive control in the learned predictiveness effect.

Shone¹,

Harris²,

Livesey³

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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In novel contexts, learning is biased toward cues previously experienced as predictive compared with cues previously experienced as nonpredictive. This is known as learned predictiveness. A recent finding has shown that instructions issued about the causal status of cues influences the expression of learned predictiveness, suggesting that controlled, volitional processes play a role in this effect. Three experiments are reported further investigating the effects of instructional manipulations on learned predictiveness. Experiment 1 confirms the influence of inferential processes, extending previous work to suggest that instructions affect associative memory as well as causal reasoning. Experiments 2 and 3 used a procedure designed to tease apart inferential and automatic contributions to the bias by presenting instructed causes that were previously predictive and previously nonpredictive. The results demonstrate that the prior predictiveness of cues influences subsequent learning over and above the effect of explicit instruction. However, it appears that the relationship between explicit instruction and predictive history is interactive rather than additive. Potential explanations for this interactivity are discussed.

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“…This memory-driven attentional capture cannot be attributable to the mechanism of bottom-up priming by stimulus repetition, as mere priming is usually not sufficient to guide attentional deployment (e.g., Olivers et al, 2006;Pan & Soto, 2010;Soto et al, 2005) and distinct neural mechanisms have been found for attentional biases by working memory and repetition priming (Soto, Humphreys, & Rotshtein, 2007;Soto, Llewelyn, & Silvanto, 2012). Working memory contents are hence considered to play an important role in top-down attentional control by biasing attention in favor of the memory-matching item to resolve the competition for selection between multiple stimuli in the environment (Desimone & Duncan, 1995), although there are some boundary constraints on the effects of working memory on visual attention (e.g., Dalvit & Eimer, 2011;Downing & Dodds, 2004;Han & Kim, 2009;Kiyonaga, Egner, & Soto, 2012;Kuo & Chao, 2014;Pan & Soto, 2010;Woodman & Luck, 2007;Zhang, et al, 2011).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Working memory-driven attention improves spatial resolution: Support for perceptual enhancement

Pan

Luo

Cheng

2016

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Previous research has indicated that attention can be biased toward those stimuli matching the contents of working memory and thereby facilitates visual processing at the location of the memory-matching stimuli. However, whether this working memory-driven attentional modulation takes place on early perceptual processes remains unclear. Our present results showed that working memory-driven attention improved identification of a brief Landolt target presented alone in the visual field. Because the suprathreshold target appeared without any external noise added (i.e., no distractors or masks), the results suggest that working memory-driven attention enhances the target signal at early perceptual stages of visual processing. Furthermore, given that performance in the Landolt target identification task indexes spatial resolution, this attentional facilitation indicates that working memory-driven attention can boost early perceptual processing via enhancement of spatial resolution at the attended location.

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Do the contents of working memory capture attention? Yes, but cognitive control matters.

Cited by 110 publications

References 47 publications

The interaction between memorized objects and abrupt onsets in oculomotor capture

The interaction between memorized objects and abrupt onsets in oculomotor capture

Automaticity and cognitive control in the learned predictiveness effect.

Working memory-driven attention improves spatial resolution: Support for perceptual enhancement

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