Feature-based guidance of attention by visual working memory is applied independently of remembered object location
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-019-01759-8
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Summary
This study investigates whether the guidance of visual attention by visual working memory (VWM) is spatially constrained by the location of the remembered object. While VWM representations are known to be structured by location—meaning access to stored features is modulated by position consistency—it remains unclear if this spatial structure extends to the top-down guidance of attention during visual search. The authors aimed to determine if feature-based attentional benefits and costs derived from VWM are applied homogeneously across the visual field or if they are stronger at the specific location where the object was encoded. To address this, the researchers conducted two experiments using a visual search paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants memorized the size of a colored square, making its color an incidental feature. They then searched for a target defined by a small internal feature within an array of disks. Some disks matched the color of the remembered square, serving as either the target or a distractor. Crucially, the location of these color-matching items was manipulated to either correspond with or mismatch the original location of the remembered square. Experiment 2 modified the design to test strategic guidance, where participants were incentivized to remember the color to aid search, eliminating distractor-match conditions. Both experiments measured response times and accuracy to assess the magnitude of attentional benefits (when the target matched the remembered color) and costs (when a distractor matched the remembered color) across different spatial correspondences. The results demonstrated robust effects of color match: participants responded faster when the target matched the remembered color and slower when a distractor matched it, confirming that VWM features guide attention. However, the magnitude of these benefits and costs was not influenced by whether the matching item appeared at the remembered location or a different location. Statistical analyses, including Bayes factors, strongly supported the null hypothesis regarding position modulation. While an independent bias to attend to the remembered location was observed, it did not interact with the feature-based guidance effects. This pattern held true for both incidental and strategic guidance conditions. These findings indicate that while VWM representations are spatially indexed, the application of feature templates to guide attention operates independently of that spatial structure. The study concludes that features in VWM influence attentional priority maps in a spatially homogeneous manner, dissociating the spatial constraints of memory maintenance from the mechanisms of feature-based attentional control. This suggests that the architectural link between VWM and attentional guidance allows for flexible, location-independent deployment of feature templates, distinct from the rigid spatial binding required for object retrieval.
Provenance
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-20 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| extract | success | pdftotext | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-26 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| enrich | success | semantic_scholar | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-20 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-26 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-26; verification: verified.
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