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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity
06:46

Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity

Published on: March 18, 2019

Orienting attention to objects in visual short-term memory.

Roberto Dell'Acqua1, Paola Sessa, Paolo Toffanin

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy. dar@unipd.it

Neuropsychologia
|October 7, 2009
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Attending to objects in visual short-term memory (VSTM) or during ongoing perception involves similar brain activity. Spatial selective attention guides search for both perceived and remembered items.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Visual Perception
  • Memory Research

Background:

  • Visual search involves locating targets among distractors.
  • Visual short-term memory (VSTM) retains visual information for brief periods.
  • Understanding the neural basis of attention in perception and memory is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the neural mechanisms of visual search for perceptual objects versus objects in VSTM.
  • To compare electroencephalographic (EEG) activity during search in perception and VSTM.
  • To determine if spatial selective attention operates similarly for perceived and remembered items.

Main Methods:

  • Measured EEG activity during visual search tasks.
  • Compared search for perceptual targets (pre-cue trials) with search for VSTM targets (post-cue trials).
  • Analyzed early lateralized electrical brain activity (N2pc) in response to search arrays of varying complexity (2 or 4 items).

Main Results:

  • An N2pc component of similar amplitude and latency was observed for perceptual search arrays of 2 or 4 items.
  • N2pc-like activity was present for VSTM search with 2 items but significantly attenuated with 4 items.
  • EEG findings suggest comparable neural processes for attending to perceptual and VSTM items.

Conclusions:

  • Spatial selective attention biases object search during both ongoing perception and memory retention.
  • Neural mechanisms for attending to perceptual objects are analogous to attending to objects held in VSTM.
  • Findings support a unified model of spatial attention across perception and memory.