Revisiting the role of visual working memory in attentional control settings

ABSTRACT

Observers adopt attentional control setting (ACS) based on their goals; stimuli that match the current goal will capture attention, whereas stimuli that do not match the current goal will not. In the present study, we revisited the role of VWM in maintaining ACSs capable of guiding attentional capture. Participants completed a Posner cueing task while either remembering a colour (Experiments 1a/1b) or searching for a colour (Experiments 2/3). To encourage the use of VWM, the colour changed on each trial. Results indicate that merely remembering a colour using VWM did not prevent memory non-matching colours from capturing attention (Experiments 1a/1b). Conversely, when participants searched for one colour, VWM supported an ACS that eliminated capture by non-matching colours (Experiments 2/3), though not if participants searched for two colours (Experiment 3). We conclude that VWM can maintain an ACS of one searched-for item that is capable of guiding attentional capture.

KEYWORDS:

• Attentional control settings
• visual working memory
• Posner cueing task
• attention
• attentional capture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada under Discovery Grant number 418507-201; and Canadian Foundation for Innovation under Grant number 30374.