The attention shift cost of refocused feature in visual working memory

This is an oral presentation in Working Memory Symposium 2023.

Abstract: When guided by retro-cues, humans can flexibly focus their inner attention on a specific representation in visual working memory (VWM) during the maintenance phase. The VWM performance of focused information is improved in a phenomenon called the retro-cue benefit. Recent researches have shown that the refocused attention, directed by a second retro-cue, also enhanced the memory of object-based representation which was unfocused under the first retro-cue, accompanied by an attention shift cost in contrast to the benefit of focused attention. However, influence of the refocused attention on a feature in VWM is unclear. In the present study, we looked for a feature-based retro-cue benefit induced by refocused attention and investigated the attention shift cost via comparisons of focused and refocused feature’s VWM performance. We used a recall task with memory load of three colored, oriented bars and manipulated the type and number of retro-cues (neutral-cue vs. early-cue vs. Late-cue vs. double-cue conditions). In the double-cue condition, two cues were sequentially oriented to different features in a trial, allowing the representation of an unfocused feature in the first cue array to become refocused and then weighted in the probe array. We found that (a) the representation of a refocused feature was enhanced; (b) compared to focused attention, the enhancement of refocused attention on representations of a feature was not weakened, which does not reject the absence of an attention shift cost for features. Our findings support a flexible maintenance process of feature-based representations guided by attention.

Keywords: double retro-cues, feature-based attention, refocused attention, visual working memory