Reprioritization of Features of Multidimensional Objects Stored in Visual Working Memory

Abstract

A prevalent view of visual working memory (VWM) is that visual information is actively maintained in the form of perceptually integrated objects. Such reliance on object-based representations would predict that after an object is fully encoded into VWM, all features of that object would need to be maintained as a coherent unit. Here, we evaluated this idea by testing whether memory resources can be redeployed to a specific feature of an object already stored in VWM. We found that observers can utilize a retrospective cue presented during the maintenance period to attenuate both the gradual deterioration and complete loss of memory for a cued feature over time, but at the cost of accelerated loss of information regarding the uncued feature. Our findings demonstrate that object representations held within VWM can be decomposed into individual features, and that having to retain additional features imposes greater demands on active maintenance processes.

Age Differences in the Efficiency of Filtering and Ignoring Distraction in Visual Working Memory

“…There are not many studies addressing the ability to ignore irrelevant features. Two previous studies compared a Dual-Feature condition to a feature retrocue condition and reported feature retrocue benefits [10,29]. It is unclear why we could not replicate these results here.…”

“…Information regarding the relevance of some features over others may become available, however, only after the objects were already encoded to WM. A handful of recent studies have also investigated whether people can selectively weight features already encoded to WM, or in other words, whether they can "ignore" irrelevant features in WM [10,29,30]. In these studies, participants encoded a set of multifeatured objects (e.g., colored and oriented gratings).…”

“…The abilities to filter distractors at encoding (hereafter simply "filtering") and to ignore distractors during memory maintenance (hereafter "ignoring") have been shown to bear different relations to an individual's WM capacity [7,8]. Furthermore, these abilities can be directed to different objects [9] or different features of an object [10,11].…”

New perspectives on binding in visual working memory

“…Moreover, the authors found a lower amplitude of the contralateral delay activity (CDA), an EEG measure related to WM load, for conditions where only colour was relevant compared to orientation or dual‐feature conditions. Memory for different features can be differentially affected by retro‐cues indicating which feature dimension is going to be tested (Park, Sy, Hong, & Tong, ), supporting some independence in storing different features of the same items, but also a trade‐off of capacity between them. A number of studies have also investigated to what degree task‐irrelevant features are memorized, finding low‐precision, but above‐chance performance in surprise tests (Shin & Ma, , ; Swan et al ., ), some degree of interference from irrelevant feature changes (Gao, Gao, Li, Sun, & Shen, ; Hyun, Woodman, Vogel, Hollingworth, & Luck, ; Shen, Tang, Wu, Shui, & Gao, ), and limitations on the ability to ignore features of specific items in mixed displays (Marshall & Bays, ; Vidal, Gauchou, Tallon‐Baudry, & Oregan, ).…”

“…A quantitative model based on these assumptions (and without any additional capacity limit for bindings) accounted well for the experimentally observed performance in a change detection task with single‐feature and binding changes. The authors proposed that a small remaining deficit in binding performance might be due to a negative correlation between memory for the two features from trial to trial (consistent with Park et al ., ).…”