Carry-over effect of learned distractor suppression on visual working memory

George, Nithin; Patel, Pal C. · 2026 · DOAJ

DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2026.1768751

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Summary

This study investigates whether learned distractor suppression, acquired through visual statistical learning (VSL), creates a carry-over effect that impairs visual working memory (WM) representations. While attention and WM are known to share cognitive resources, it remains unclear if history-driven attentional biases modulate internal WM processes. The authors tested the hypothesis that proactive suppression of a high-probability distractor location (HPDL) during visual search would degrade the sensory quality of information encoded at that same location during a subsequent WM task, effectively creating a "representational blind spot." The research comprised two experiments involving undergraduate participants. In Phase 1, participants performed a visual search task where a salient singleton distractor appeared with high probability (60%) in one specific quadrant (HPDL) and low probability in others. This phase induced statistical learning of distractor locations. In Phase 2, participants completed a delayed discrimination WM task. They encoded target shapes presented at either the HPDL or a low-probability distractor location (LPDL) and later identified whether a probe shape had contained a target. Experiment 1 imposed a low WM load (one target), while Experiment 2 imposed a high WM load (two targets). Performance was assessed using signal detection theory measures, including sensitivity (d’) and false alarm rates. Results indicated that the carry-over effect of learned suppression was contingent on WM load. In Experiment 1 (low load), there were no significant differences in sensitivity, false alarm rates, or response bias between HPDL and LPDL conditions, suggesting that executive resources compensated for any degraded sensory input. However, in Experiment 2 (high load), participants exhibited significantly reduced sensitivity (d’) and higher false alarm rates for targets presented at the HPDL compared to the LPDL. This pattern indicates that under high cognitive demand, the learned suppression persisted and impaired the encoding of WM items at the previously suppressed location. These findings support a non-modular, shared resource account of attention and WM, suggesting that they operate via a common spatial priority map. The results imply that VSL operates by down-regulating sensory gain at suppressed locations, a process that is indiscriminate and persists across task switches. When WM resources are depleted, this down-regulation degrades the representational quality of items encoded at those locations. The study provides empirical evidence that history-driven attentional biases can negatively impact WM performance, highlighting the functional overlap between external attentional selection and internal memory maintenance.

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• visual search