Recent studies have revealed a strong relationship between visual working memory and selective attention, such that attention is biased by what is currently on our mind. The interplay between working memory and visual perception has been the subject of considerable debate. Two important aspects of working memory are how many items it can. The meaning of the concept working memory wm depends on the theory in which the concept figures. Despite a vast body of research on visual attention and on working memory, the interaction between the two has seldom been addressed. When people are asked to hold an item in wm for instance a color. Guidance of visual attention from working memory contents depends on stimulus attributes. Author links open overlay panel bao zhang a john x. However, the new data suggest that memory maintenance might be attentiondemanding rather than automatic. Background the limited capacity of visual working memory vwm. The videotoolbox software for visual psychophysics. We conclude that even in the absence of visual stimulation, early visual areas support shifting of attention within memorized representations, similar to when attention is shifted in the outside world.
Working memory holds information actively being used in cognitive performance. We also investigated whether the effect of similarity on the attentional requirement for maintaining bindings and features is due to the stability of vwm representations by inserting a suffix during the maintenance phase of vwm in experiment 3. Data preprocessing and erp averaging were run with the brain vision analyzer software. Morey department of psychological sciences, university of missouri, 18 mcalester hall, columbia, missouri, 65211, usa working memory holds information actively being used in cognitive performance. Attentional control, using working memory of distractor experience and strong biases, is a more effective posit than the dichotomic bias between goaldriven factors and physically salient factors. Participants performed a color changedetection task. Many investigators of visual working memory have assumed an automatic, modalityspecific memory faculty. Two important aspects of working memory are how many items it can hold, and.
Prominent new theories of attention consider visual working memory as attention directed to an internal representation chun, 2011. Frontiers effects of working memory load on visual. Individual differences in visual working memory capacity request. Trends in cognitive sciences vol 10, issue 4, pages 9. Neural processing of repeated search targets depends upon the stimuli. The loss of information from visual working memory depends on retrocue reliability. Most theories of attention propose that we maintain attentional templates in visual working memory to control what information is selected. Recently, vogel and colleagues used eventrelated brain potentials to. The relation between storage and processing of information in working memory is unclear but has been studied using individual differences. The relationship between visual working memory and visual mental imagery is discussed in light of the current findings. In the present study, we directly tested this proposal by measuring the contralateraldelay activity cda of human eventrelated potentials during visual search tasks in which the target is cued on each trial.
Whereas tracking multiple targets across the visual filed depends on visual. Visual working memory vwm is a limitedcapacity, short. This finding confirms the hypothesis that encoding strategies may influence visual working memory performance, and it is contrary to the hypothesis that the optimal strategy is to filter out any items beyond the storage capacity. Concrete mindset impairs filtering in visual working memory. Linden3 1department of psychiatry, goetheuniversity, 60528 frankfurt, germany 2faculty of psychology and neuroscience, department of. Recently, vogel and colleagues used eventrelated brain potentials to show that these two things are related. Although the capacity of visual working memory is limited, memoranda that are spaced. Is the binding of visual features in working memory resourcedemanding. Executive control of stimulusdriven and goaldirected. Working memory also allows information to be combined from perception and longterm memory and shortterm memory. Pdf interactions between visual working memory and. In the present study, we investigated whether training in visual filtering efficiency fe could improve vwm. However, the new data suggest that memory maintenance may be attentiondemanding rather than automatic. There have been a few recent suggestions that working memory may play a role in the control of selective attention 1,2, but evidence for a specific role has been scarce.
Working memory is a system that provides an interface between the environment and various aspects of the mind. Multitasking increases the demands on working memory and reduces the amount of resources available for cognitive control. High visual working memory capacity in trait social anxiety. This study uses a combination of tms, fmri and eeg to provide causal evidence for the role of the prefrontal cortex in the modulation of selective attention. Visual working memory depends on attentional filtering ncbi nih. Guidance of visual attention from working memory contents. Separating memoranda in depth increases visual working memory. Working memory and attention a conceptual analysis and.
This idea has received considerable empirical support from studies of the attentional capture effect in visual search. During the retention interval, a secondary object, irrelevant to the memory. The influence of working memory on attention has been noted in several studies using dual task designs. Because this sorting requires simultaneous storage and processing of information, this test is a strong measure of the attentional control aspects of working memory. Attention and working memory attention, memory and. Two important aspects of working memory are how many items it can hold, and how efficiently it can be used. Visual working memory depends on attentional filtering working memory, the brain system for holding and manipulating a small amount of information temporarily, is essential for many cognitive activities. Beck the university of iowa efficient visual search requires that attention is guided strategically to relevant objects, and most theories. Visual working memory is the mechanism supporting the continued maintenance of information after sensory inputs are removed.
Even though working memory has received much interest from researchers in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, remarkably little is known about the mechanisms on which it depends, or about the factors that set its limits. There has been controversy on whether working memory wm contents automatically guide attention. This evidence appears to suggest that unlike visual working memory related. The interval duration depended on the precue interval duration, for a total.
Morey cc 2006 visual working memory depends on attentional filtering. Visual attention modulates phenomenal consciousness. Shifting attention within memory representations involves. Effects of strategy on visual working memory capacity. Distractor filtering efficiency has been suggested to be an important factor in determining the visual working memory vwm capacity of individuals. We propose that encoding strategy and, more specifically, attentional selection, underlie the correlation of some vwm tasks and iq, and not variations in vwm itself. Visual working memory is a brief, capacitylimited store of visual. Memory based attention capture when multiple items are maintained in visual working memory andrew hollingworth and valerie m. Encoding strategy and not visual working memory capacity. Vwm does not depend on sustained visual attention to the object johnson et al.
Although the dichotomy of bottomup and topdown does not account for selection biases that are not goalrelated nor physically salient, it still provides a highly acceptable theory of attentional control. Zhang b, lingyue kong c, sai huang d, zhenzhu yue e, suiping wang a. Does maintaining bindings in visual working memory require more attention than maintaining features. Note that task set refers to the initial setting of perceptual filters to. Attentional templates in visual working memory journal. Based on the high attentional resources and the wide visual attentional allocation in trait anxiety, visual working memory capacity might be positively correlated with trait social anxiety but not state anxiety. However, other data show that not all memorized items influence the deployment of attention, thus calling for a distinction within working memory. Working memory is often used synonymously with shortterm memory, but some theorists consider the two forms of memory distinct, assuming that working memory allows.
The relationship between visual attention and visual. Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily. Theoretically, the type of attention involved could be specific to vision. Dopaminergic modulation of visual attention and working. Wm has, conversely, been thought of as a means of maintaining representations to voluntarily guide. Working memory capacity is one of the most important cognitive functions influencing individual traits, such as attentional control, fluid intelligence, and also psychopathological traits. Visual working memory capacity does not modulate the feature. Is the binding of visual features in working memory. Attentional capture by working memory contents yi pan hangzhou normal university there has been controversy on whether working memory wm contents automatically guide attention.
Indeed, a recent approach to vwm has proposed that an attentional filtering. However, according to the theory of impaired topdown control in trait anxiety, visual working memory might be negatively correlated. Objectnumber sequencing is the wj iii cog auditory working memory test reborn with a more descriptive name and a better set of scoring rules. Like further posits of attentional controls dependence on experience, learning to reject irrelevant stimuli depends on visual long term memory. Visual working memory vwm is a system to actively maintain visual. Here we show a direct causal role for working memory. The capacity to perform some complex tasks depends critically on the ability to retain taskrelevant information in an accessible state over time working memory and to selectively process information in the environment attention. Previous research suggests that anxiety is associated with impaired cognitive function, and studies have shown low verbal working memory capacity in individuals with high trait anxiety. Visual working memory depends on attentional filtering. The handoff of the attentional template from working memory after repeated search. It is generally considered that working memory wm capacity is limited and that wm capacity affects cognitive processes. Taskinduced brain deactivations dissociate between visual working memory and attention jutta s. Morey 1 1 department of psychological sciences, university of missouri, 18 mcalester hall, columbia, missouri 65211, usa. Visual working memory wm capacity is correlated with the magnitude of attentional capture by salient, taskirrelevant stimuli 35, 36, an effect that is thought to re.
Working memory capacity affects tradeoff between quality and. Working memory is important for reasoning and the guidance of decisionmaking and behavior. Stimulus presentation was controlled by eprime software version 1. Electrophysiological correlates of the flexible allocation of visual. The relationship between attention and working memory. The role of working memory in visual selective attention. The relationship between visual attention and visual working memory encoding.
Interactions between working memory and visual perception. It is a type of memory that allows us to hold information in mind while we are working on it. The present study tried to replicate the effect of wmbased attentional capture using an adaption of downing. The capacity limitation of working memory requires that only relevant. Filtering performance in visual working memory is improved by reducing early spatial attention to the distractors. Switching between filter settings reduces the efficient utilization of. Memorybased attention capture when multiple items are.
Although there is no doubt that attention and working memory are closely related, this relationship may not be as ubiquitous as existing data suggest. Interactions between visual working memory an d visual. Working memory, the brain system for holding and manipulating a small amount of information temporarily, is essential for many cognitive activities. As one example, consider driving a car in an unfamiliar city. Visual working memory vwm allows us to actively represent a limited amount. There is conflicting evidence on whether the capacity of visual working memory vwm reflects a central capacity limit that also influences intelligence. This is an acceptable finding to grasp because long term memory possesses the ability to direct attention to target items in the present and later on, and, away from distractors. Working memory and attention interact in a way that enables us to focus on relevant items and maintain current goals. Visual working memory depends on attentional filtering nelson cowan 1 and candice c.
Does maintaining bindings in visual working memory require. The goal of experiment 1 was to determine whether humans store attentional templates in visual working memory during a visual search task similar to that of chelazzi and colleagues 1993, in which the search target is cued at the beginning of each trial fig. Olivers1, judith peters2,3, roos houtkamp4 and pieter r. Working memory capacity an overview sciencedirect topics.
Mayer,1 alard roebroeck,2 konrad maurer,1 and david e. The function of working memory whereby we strategically direct our attention is called. Working memory is more than a temporary storage of information short term memory because it also includes a manipulation as to allow people to perform complex activities such as reasoning, learning, and comprehension. University of groningen individual differences in working memory. Working memory wm and attention have been studied as separate cognitive constructs, although it has long been acknowledged that attention plays an important role in controlling the activation, maintenance, and manipulation of representations in wm. We also included a parametric manipulation of the number of possible targets to further test the hypothesis that the cda could be used to directly measure the attentional templates in visual working memory.
862 804 1400 470 166 769 1129 214 740 30 1245 180 1207 378 57 746 467 617 6 282 235 702 995 918 1005 177 1466 305 1185 1468 1485 912 917 690