Action Planning Renders Objects in Working Memory More Attentionally Salient.

A rapidly growing body of work suggests that visual working memory (VWM) is fundamentally action oriented. Consistent with this, we recently showed that attention is more strongly biased by VWM representations of objects when we plan to act on those objects in the future. Using EEG and eye tracking, here, we investigated neurophysiological correlates of the interactions between VWM and action.

Comparing Neural Correlates of Memory Encoding and Maintenance for Foveal and Peripheral Stimuli.

Visual working memory is believed to rely on top-down attentional mechanisms that sustain active sensory representations in early visual cortex, a mechanism referred to as sensory recruitment. However, both bottom-up sensory input and top-down attentional modulations thereof appear to prioritize the fovea over the periphery, such that initially peripheral percepts may even be assimilated by foveal processes. This raises the question whether and how visual working memory differs for central and peripheral input.

Feature priming and the capture of visual attention: linking two ambiguity resolution hypotheses.

Visual search for a unique stimulus is often faster when the feature defining this target is repeated. Recent research has related this feature priming to ambiguity: priming effects appear stronger when the search target is perceptually ambiguous, as when the search array contains a salient distractor. Here we link the ambiguity that underlies feature priming to ambiguity in neural representation caused by the receptive field organization of visual cortex.

An analysis of the time course of attention in preview search.

We used a probe dot procedure to examine the time course of attention in preview search (Watson & Humphreys, 1997). Participants searched for an outline red vertical bar among other new red horizontal bars and old green vertical bars, superimposed on a blue background grid. Following the reaction time response for search, the participants had to decide whether a probe dot had briefly been presented.

Parieto-occipital areas involved in efficient filtering in search: a time course analysis of visual marking using behavioural and functional imaging procedures.

Search for a colour-form conjunction target can be facilitated by presenting one set of distractors prior to the second set of distractors and the target: the preview benefit (Watson & Humphreys, 1997). The early presentation of one set of distractors enables them to be efficiently filtered from search. We report two studies investigating the time course of the preview benefit.