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Selective maintenance in visual working memory does not require sustained visual attention
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Selective maintenance in visual working memory does not require sustained visual attention

Andrew Hollingworth and Ashleigh M Maxcey-Richard
Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, Vol.39(4), pp.1047-1058
08/2013
DOI: 10.1037/a0030238
PMCID: PMC3594119
PMID: 23067118
url
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/3594119View
Open Access

Abstract

In four experiments, we tested whether sustained visual attention is required for the selective maintenance of objects in visual working memory (VWM). Participants performed a color change-detection task. During the retention interval, a valid cue indicated the item that would be tested. Change-detection performance was higher in the valid-cue condition than in a neutral-cue control condition. To probe the role of visual attention in the cuing effect, on half of the trials, a difficult search task was inserted after the cue, precluding sustained attention on the cued item. The addition of the search task produced no observable decrement in the magnitude of the cuing effect. In a complementary test, search efficiency was not impaired by simultaneously prioritizing an object for retention in VWM. The results demonstrate that selective maintenance in VWM can be dissociated from the locus of visual attention.
Adult Attention - physiology Color Perception - physiology Cues Discrimination (Psychology) - physiology Humans Memory, Short-Term - physiology Space Perception - physiology Task Performance and Analysis Visual Perception - physiology Young Adult

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