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Competition for the focus of attention in visual working memory: perceptual recency versus executive control
Author(s) -
Hitch Graham J.,
Hu Yanmei,
Allen Richard J.,
Baddeley Alan D.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/nyas.13631
Subject(s) - psychology , working memory , suffix , cognitive psychology , perception , interference theory , focus (optics) , control (management) , competition (biology) , process (computing) , cognition , computer science , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , linguistics , philosophy , physics , optics , ecology , biology , operating system
Abstract Previous research on memory for a short sequence of visual stimuli indicates that access to the focus of attention (FoA) can be achieved in either of two ways. The first is automatic and is indexed by the recency effect, the enhanced retention of the final item. The second is strategic and based on instructions to prioritize items differentially, a process that draws on executive capacity and boosts retention of information deemed important. In both cases, the increased level of retention can be selectively reduced by presenting a poststimulus distractor (or suffix ). We manipulated these variables across three experiments. Experiment 1 generalized previous evidence that prioritizing a single item enhances its retention and increases its vulnerability to interference from a poststimulus suffix. A second experiment showed that the enhancement from prioritizing one or two items comes at a cost to the recency effect. A third experiment showed that prioritizing two items renders memory for both vulnerable to interference from an irrelevant suffix. The results suggest that some but not all items in working memory compete to occupy a narrow FoA and that this competition is determined by a combination of perceptually driven recency and internal executive control.