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Long-term memory and working memory compete and cooperate to guide attention.
Zall Hirschstein1, Mariam Aly2
1Department of Psychology, Columbia University, 406 Schermerhorn Hall, 1190 Amsterdam Avenue, MC 5501, New York, NY, 10027, USA. zall.hirschstein@gmail.com.
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics
|October 27, 2022
Summary
Long-term memory (LTM) and working memory (WM) cooperate to speed up visual search when guiding attention together. They compete only under specific conditions, showing no asymmetry in their interactions.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Human Attention
Background:
- Both long-term memory (LTM) and working memory (WM) influence visual search.
- Previous research indicates memory can automatically capture attention, sometimes hindering performance.
- The interplay between LTM and WM in guiding attention remains less understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how LTM and WM cooperate or compete when guiding attention in the same task.
- To determine if there is asymmetry in the cooperation or competition between LTM and WM.
- To elucidate the mechanisms of attentional guidance by multiple active memories.
Main Methods:
- A series of behavioral experiments were conducted.
- Participants performed visual search tasks while LTM and WM guided attention.
- Experimental conditions manipulated whether memories cued the same or different locations/dimensions.
Main Results:
- LTM and WM reliably cooperated to guide attention, enhancing visual search speed when cues were congruent.
- Competition between LTM and WM occurred under specific circumstances, particularly when memories involved different feature dimensions (e.g., shape vs. color).
- No evidence of asymmetry was found; WM did not disproportionately help or hinder LTM-guided search, or vice versa.
Conclusions:
- LTM and WM can cooperate to guide attention, even when only one memory is task-relevant.
- Competition can arise when distracting memory-based features are salient.
- This study clarifies the cooperative and competitive dynamics between LTM and WM in attentional guidance.
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