Location-Specific Effects of Attention During Visual Short-Term Memory Maintenance

Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that early sensory areas such as area V1 are recruited to actively maintain a selected feature of the item held in visual short-term memory (VSTM). These findings raise the possibility that visual attention operates in similar manners across perceptual and memory...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 2014-06, Vol.40 (3), p.1103-1116
Main Authors: Matsukura, Michi, Cosman, Joshua D., Roper, Zachary J. J., Vatterott, Daniel B., Vecera, Shaun P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activity levels. Psychomotricity
Attention
Biological and medical sciences
Color Perception
Cues
Field Dependence-Independence
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Information processing
Learning. Memory
Medical imaging
Memory
Memory, Short-Term
Neuropsychology
Orientation
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Perception
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychophysics
Reaction Time
Retention
Retention (Psychology)
Sensory perception
Short Term Memory
Vigilance. Attention. Sleep
Vision
Visual Attention
Visual Memory
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Summary:Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that early sensory areas such as area V1 are recruited to actively maintain a selected feature of the item held in visual short-term memory (VSTM). These findings raise the possibility that visual attention operates in similar manners across perceptual and memory representations to a certain extent, despite memory-level and perception-level selections are functionally dissociable. If VSTM operates by retaining "reasonable copies" of scenes constructed during sensory processing (Serences et al., 2009, p. 207, the sensory recruitment hypothesis), then it is possible that selective attention can be guided by both exogenous (peripheral) and endogenous (central) cues during VSTM maintenance. Yet, the results from the previous studies that examined this issue are inconsistent. In the present study, we investigated whether attention can be directed to a specific item's location represented in VSTM with the exogenous cue in a well-controlled setting. The results from the four experiments suggest that, as observed with the endogenous cue, the exogenous cue can efficiently guide selective attention during VSTM maintenance. The finding is not only consistent with the sensory recruitment hypothesis but also validates the legitimacy of the exogenous cue use in past and future studies.
ISSN:0096-1523
1939-1277
DOI:10.1037/a0035685