Executive control of stimulus-driven and goal-directed attention in visual working memory
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-016-1106-7
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Summary
This study investigates the role of executive control in mediating both goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention within visual working memory (VWM). The authors address a gap in existing models, which often fail to specify how visual attention is deployed or whether shifts in attention during perception and VWM share underlying mechanisms. Specifically, the research tests two assumptions: first, that executive resources are critical for the goal-directed prioritization of specific items within a memory sequence; and second, that ignoring a distracting visual stimulus (a suffix) requires executive control. The researchers employed a probed recall task where participants viewed a series of four colored shapes and were subsequently cued to recall one item. Experiment 1 examined goal-directed attention by instructing participants to prioritize either the first (primacy) or last (recency) item for higher notional rewards. This was combined with a concurrent verbal task to manipulate executive load: a low-load condition (repeating a number) and a high-load condition (counting in twos). Experiment 2 examined stimulus-driven attention by introducing a visual suffix distractor after the final study item, again combined with low and high concurrent verbal loads (counting backwards in twos for high load). The design allowed for the analysis of serial position curves to distinguish between automatic encoding and executive maintenance. Experiment 1 found that prioritizing the first or last item improved recall for those specific items under low executive load. However, increasing the concurrent task difficulty significantly reduced or abolished these prioritization gains, particularly for the first item. This indicates that goal-directed prioritization relies heavily on executive resources. Experiment 2 revealed that a demanding concurrent task disrupted memory for all items except the most recent, whereas the visual suffix disrupted only the most recent items. Crucially, there was no interaction between concurrent load and the presence of the suffix; the suffix interference remained consistent regardless of executive load. This suggests that the disruption caused by the suffix is driven by automatic, stimulus-driven attention rather than executive control. The findings support a model of VWM featuring a domain-general episodic buffer with a transient, limited-capacity "privileged state." This state holds the most recent perceptual input and goal-relevant information. The results imply a functional separation between attentional mechanisms: executive control is necessary for actively maintaining earlier items and implementing goal-directed strategies, while the encoding of recent items and the involuntary capture of attention by salient distractors are largely automatic processes that do not draw upon executive resources. This distinction clarifies how internal goal-directed strategies and external stimulus-driven inputs interact within working memory.
Key finding
Executive control resources are essential for the goal-directed prioritization and maintenance of items in visual working memory, but they are not required to ignore stimulus-driven visual distractors.
Methodology
lab_experiment
Sample size: 60
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via author_sweep_intake on 2026-05-28.
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | author_sweep | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-28 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| enrich | failed | — | — | — | 4 | 2026-07-02 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 15 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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