Concurrent guidance of attention by multiple working memory items: Behavioral and computational evidence

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Visual Perception

Background:

• Visual search relies on attentional templates in visual working memory (VWM) to guide attention.
• A key debate exists on whether VWM can hold one (Single-Item-Template hypothesis; SIT) or multiple (Multiple-Item-Template hypothesis; MIT) attentional templates concurrently.

Purpose of the Study:

• To empirically test the SIT and MIT hypotheses regarding the capacity of attentional templates in VWM.
• To investigate whether multiple items in VWM can simultaneously guide attentional processes during visual search.

Main Methods:

• Participants memorized two colors, serving as potential attentional templates.
• A visual search task was employed where targets and distractors could match the memorized colors.
• Two drift-diffusion models, representing SIT and MIT, were constructed to analyze behavioral data (response times and error rates).

Main Results:

• Significant attentional guidance was observed when either the target or distractor matched the memorized colors.
• Behavioral data, including response time distributions and error rates, showed a better fit with the MIT hypothesis.
• Computational modeling indicated that the MIT hypothesis provided a superior explanation of the observed search performance compared to SIT.

Conclusions:

• The findings support the Multiple-Item-Template hypothesis, demonstrating that VWM can concurrently guide attention using multiple items.
• This research provides both behavioral and computational evidence for the capacity of multiple attentional templates in VWM.
• The study advances our understanding of how visual working memory actively influences attentional selection during complex visual tasks.