Sensory reliance in visual working memory across active and passive states

Visual working memory (VWM) has been thought to operate in active and passive states, but whether these states differentially engage sensory storage remains debated. The current study aims to delve into this debate further by testing whether increasing the load of active/passive states in VWM affects detection sensitivity to an incoming visual stimulus, a psychophysiological probing method which has been verified to specifically uncover the sensory nature of working memory storage. Across Experiments 1-3, we consistently found that loading either active or passive state impaired visual detection to a similar degree, indicating comparable sensory demands for both states. In Experiment 4, we further validated the manipulation of VWM states by observing dissociative memory-driven attentional bias effect of different states. Experiment 5 showed that information released from VWM no longer impaired visual detection, further confirming the specific role of working memory storage (in either active or passive state) in interfering with concurrent sensory processing. Together, these findings suggest that both active and passive states in VWM engage sensory storage, with comparable functional consequences for ongoing sensory processing.