New templates interfere with existing templates depending on their respective priority in visual working memory.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Visual Perception

Background:

• Attentional templates guide visual search by storing target features.
• Transiently active templates are efficient but can incur costs when co-activated with sustained templates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if memory representation quality influences costs associated with simultaneous attentional template activation.
• To examine the impact of template type (sustained vs. transient) and mixing on visual search performance and memory.

Main Methods:

• Participants performed visual search tasks with cued target colors under blocked and mixed conditions.
• Memory for target colors was assessed via reproduction on a memory wheel.
• Experiments manipulated template priority, retention intervals, and cueing to assess costs.

Main Results:

• Reaction times were longer for sustained targets in mixed conditions compared to blocked conditions.
• Memory judgments indicated increased random guesses for sustained templates in mixed conditions, mirroring reaction time costs.
• Increasing sustained template priority reduced interference costs.

Conclusions:

• Newly activated transient templates retroactively interfere with sustained templates, impairing visual search and memory stability.
• Interference depends critically on the priority of representations within visual working memory.
• Interference affects both visual search control and memory maintenance processes.