Feature-based guidance of attention by visual working memory is applied independently of remembered object location

Abstract

Visual working memory (VWM) has been implicated both in the online representation of object tokens (in the object-file framework) and in the top-down guidance of attention during visual search, implementing a feature template. It is well established that object representations in VWM are structured by location, with access to the content of VWM modulated by position consistency. In the present study, we examined whether this property generalizes to the guidance of attention. Specifically, in two experiments, we probed whether the guidance of spatial attention from features in VWM is modulated by the position of the object from which these features were encoded. Participants remembered an object with an incidental color. Items in a subsequent search array could match either the color of the remembered object, the location, or both. Robust benefits of color match (when the matching item was the target) and costs (when the matching items was a distractor) were observed. Critically, the magnitude of neither effect was influenced by spatial correspondence. The results demonstrate that features in VWM influence attentional priority maps in a manner that does not necessarily inherit the spatial structure of the object representations in which those features are maintained.

Guidance of attention from visual working memory is feature-based, not object-based: Implications for models of feature binding.

“…In addition to the structure potentially introduced by feature conjunctions, we have recently tested whether the guidance of attention from VWM is influenced by structure imposed by the locations of remembered objects. In Hollingworth and Bahle (2020b; see also van Moorselaar et al, 2014), participants remembered an object with an incidental color in preparation for a memory test at the end of the trial. In the search array, one item could match the remembered color, this item was either the target or a distractor, and this item either appeared in the original location of the remembered object or in a different location.…”

“…With no direct association between the activity of feature values belonging to the same object, such guidance would be implemented in a manner that was largely insensitive to object structure, as observed here; guidance would be primarily feature-based and not object-based. Moreover, with spatially global activity, attentional guidance would also be applied in a spatially global manner (Martinez-Trujillo & Treue, 2004; W. Zhang & Luck, 2009) and independently of the original location of the remembered object (Hollingworth & Bahle, 2020b; van Moorselaar et al, 2014).…”

“…For the memory task, participants remembered the orientations of two shape-color conjunction objects. We could be confident that participants would also encode the shapes and colors of the memory stimuli and that these values would guide attention (Foerster & Schneider, 2018; Hollingworth & Bahle, 2020b; Hollingworth & Luck, 2009; Hollingworth & Matsukura, 2019; Hollingworth et al, 2013a, 2013b). The critical data came from validity effects during the search task as a function of same- versus-different object match.…”

“…VWM did not predict target location, and these experiments therefore probed the incidental guidance of attention from VWM. In this method, the magnitude of the expected validity effect on response time (RT) provides an index of the strength VWM-based guidance (Hollingworth & Bahle, 2020b). If the guidance of attention from VWM is strongly object-based, with guidance based on a match to directly integrated feature representations, we should observe a larger validity effect in the same-object-match condition than in the differentobject-match condition.…”

“…We expected that there would be minimal guidance of attention from remembered orientation itself (Hulleman, 2020). However, we could be confident that color and shape would nevertheless be encoded into memory and would guide attention (Foerster & Schneider, 2018;Hollingworth & Bahle, 2020b;Hollingworth & Matsukura, 2019;Hollingworth et al, 2013aHollingworth et al, , 2013b. This design largely eliminated the possibility that participants would strategically attend to matching search stimuli to improve performance on the memory test.…”