Similar Quality of Visual Working Memory Representations between Negative and Positive Attentional Templates

TL;DR

This study shows that negative and positive attentional templates are similarly represented in visual working memory, despite their different effects on attention.

Contribution

The study reveals that the quality of visual working memory representations is similar for negative and positive attentional templates.

Findings

Participants showed no significant difference in memory precision between positive and negative cues.

Higher visual working memory quality from negative cues improved attentional guidance away from distractors.

There was no difference in memory precision across all three cue types (positive, negative, neutral).

Abstract

Visual working memory (VWM) plays an important role during visual search, with some theories suggesting an equivalence between working memory representations and guidance from attentional templates. However, recent work has shown that participants can also use ‘negative templates’, the foreknowledge of distractor-features stored in VWM, to guide attention away from distractors during visual search. These negative templates must also be represented in working memory, but the question remains whether the quality of the working memory representations underlying negative and positive templates are similar, in spite of their opposite impacts on attention. In this study, participants (N = 33) engaged in a visual search task for a shape-defined target after receiving a positive cue (target color), negative cue (distractor color) or neutral cue (non-informative). In 20% of the trials, a color-wheel probe was presented instead of a search array to measure the quality of the cue representation stored in VWM. Our results revealed that participants were more likely to guess in response to neutral cues than negative cues. Yet, the comparison between positive and negative cues showed no significant differences. However, we found no difference in memory precision for the three cue types. More interestingly, the more the VWM quality is boosted by the negative cue, the greater the ability to guide attention away from distractors. Such a pattern of results might map to recent evidence of between-individuals differences in utilization of negative cues. These findings highlight the distinction between attentional templates and simple maintenance in working memory.

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