The contents of visual memory are only partly under volitional control

The Positive Impact of Combining Motor Imagery, Action Observation and Coach's Feedback on Archery Accuracy of Young Athletes

In recent years, learning and motor control researchers have examined, in diverse ways, the practical strategies that enhance motor skill acquisition in sport. In this study we investigated the impact of combining Motor Imagery (MI), Feedback (F), and Action Observation (AO) on the quality of archery longbow shooting at a 10-meter target. We randomly assigned 60 young athletes to (a) a Control group (Control), (b) a Feedback and Motor Imagery group (F + MI), and (c) a Feedback, Motor Imagery, and Action Observation group (F + MI + AO). Over an 8-week intervention period athletes performed two training sessions per week. During each session, all participants engaged in two blocks of ten effective shots. Performance improvement was significantly greater in the F + MI + AO group than in the two other groups, confirming the beneficial impact of combining all three methods of improving archery accuracy. These findings suggest practical recommendations for athletes and trainers for delivering optimal mental training to improve shooting accuracy for these archers.

Memory for the usual: the influence of schemas on memory for non-schematic information in younger and older adults

Schemas are abstract mental representations that influence perceptual and memory processes. Schemas can aide memory for information that is related or congruent with a given schema (i.e., schematic information), yet it is unclear how schemas affect memory for information that does not directly relate to the schema (i.e., non-schematic information). Using a novel scene paradigm, the current series of studies investigated how schemas affect memory for schematic and non-schematic information, as well as how directed encoding influences remembering of both types of information in younger and older adults. Results showed poorer accurate recognition of non-schematic information relative to schematic information, influenced largely by a bias in identifying non-schematic items as "new". While directed encoding was able to increase remembering of non-schematic information and decrease bias across both age groups, the present set of studies highlights the pervasive influence of a schema on memory for non-schematic information.

Are failures to look, to represent, or to learn associated with change blindness during screen-capture video learning?

Although phenomena such as change blindness and inattentional blindness are robust, it is not entirely clear how these failures of visual awareness are related to failures to attend to visual information, to represent it, and to ultimately learn in visual environments. On some views, failures of visual awareness such as change blindness underestimate the true extent of otherwise rich visual representations. This might occur if people did represent the changing features but failed to compare them across views. In contrast, other approaches emphasize visual representations that are created only when they are functional. On this view, change blindness may be associated with poor representations of the changing properties. It is possible to compromise and propose that representational richness varies across contexts, but then it becomes important to detail relationships among attention, awareness, and learning in specific, but applicable, settings. We therefore assessed these relationships in an important visual setting: screen-captured instructional videos. In two experiments, we tested the degree to which attention (as measured by gaze) predicts change detection, and whether change detection is associated with visual representations and content learning. We observed that attention sometimes predicted change detection, and that change detection was associated with representations of attended objects. However, there was no relationship between change detection and learning.

No evidence of binding items to spatial configuration representations in visual working memory

When detecting changes in visual features (e.g., colour or shape), object locations, represented as points within a configuration, might also be automatically represented in working memory. If the configuration of a scene is represented automatically, the locations of individual items might form part of this representation, irrespective of their relevance to the task. Participants took part in a change-detection task in which they studied displays containing different sets of items (shapes, letters, objects), which varied in their task relevance. Specifically, they were asked to remember the features of two sets, and ignore the third set. During the retention interval, an audio cue indicated which of the to-be-remembered sets would become the target set (having a 50% probability of containing a new feature). At test, they were asked to indicate whether a new feature was present amongst the target set. We measured binding of individual items to the configuration by manipulating the locations of the different sets so that their position in the test display either matched or mismatched their original location in the study display. If items are automatically bound to the configuration, location changes should disrupt performance, even if they were explicitly instructed not to remember the features of that particular set of items. There was no effect on performance of changing the locations of any of the sets between study and test displays, indicating that the configural representation did not enter their decision stage, and therefore that individual item representations are not necessarily bound to the configuration.

The relationship between visual attention and visual working memory encoding: A dissociation between covert and overt orienting

There is substantial debate over whether visual working memory (VWM) and visual attention constitute a single system for the selection of task-relevant perceptual information or whether they are distinct systems that can be dissociated when their representational demands diverge. In the present study, we focused on the relationship between visual attention and the encoding of objects into VWM. Participants performed a color change-detection task. During the retention interval, a secondary object, irrelevant to the memory task, was presented. Participants were instructed either to execute an overt shift of gaze to this object (Experiments 1-3) or to attend it covertly (Experiments 4 and 5). Our goal was to determine whether these overt and covert shifts of attention disrupted the information held in VWM. We hypothesized that saccades, which typically introduce a memorial demand to bridge perceptual disruption, would lead to automatic encoding of the secondary object. However, purely covert shifts of attention, which introduce no such demand, would not result in automatic memory encoding. The results supported these predictions. Saccades to the secondary object produced substantial interference with VWM performance, but covert shifts of attention to this object produced no interference with VWM performance. These results challenge prevailing theories that consider attention and VWM to reflect a common mechanism. In addition, they indicate that the relationship between attention and VWM is dependent on the memorial demands of the orienting behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record

The temporal dynamics of visual working memory guidance of selective attention

The biased competition model proposes that there is top-down directing of attention to a stimulus matching the contents of working memory (WM), even when the maintenance of a WM representation is detrimental to target relevant performance. Despite many studies elucidating that spatial WM guidance can be present early in the visual processing system, whether visual WM guidance also influences perceptual selection remains poorly understood. Here, we investigated the electrophysiological correlates of early guidance of attention by WM in humans. Participants were required to perform a visual search task while concurrently maintaining object representations in their visual WM. Behavioral results showed that response times (RTs) were longer when the distractor in the visual search task was held in WM. The earliest WM guidance effect was observed in the P1 component (90–130 ms), with match trials eliciting larger P1 amplitude than mismatch trials. A similar result was also found in the N1 component (160–200 ms). These P1 and N1 effects could not be attributed to bottom-up perceptual priming from the presentation of a memory cue, because there was no significant difference in early event-related potential (ERP) component when the cue was merely perceptually identified but not actively held in WM. Standardized Low Resolution Electrical Tomography Analysis (sLORETA) showed that the early WM guidance occurred in the occipital lobe and the N1-related activation occurred in the parietal gyrus. Time-frequency data suggested that alpha-band event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) magnitudes increased under the match condition compared with the mismatch condition only when the cue was held in WM. In conclusion, the present study suggests that the reappearance of a stimulus held in WM enhanced activity in the occipital area. Subsequently, this initial capture of attention by WM could be inhibited by competing visual inputs through attention re-orientation, reflecting by the alpha-band rhythm.

The strategic retention of task-relevant objects in visual working memory

The serial and spatially extended nature of many real-world visual tasks suggests the need for control over the content of visual working memory (VWM). We examined the management of VWM in a task that required participants to prioritize individual objects for retention during scene viewing. There were 5 principal findings: (a) Strategic retention of task-relevant objects was effective and was dissociable from the current locus of visual attention; (b) strategic retention was implemented by protection from interference rather than by preferential encoding; (c) this prioritization was flexibly transferred to a new object as task demands changed; (d) no-longer-relevant items were efficiently eliminated from VWM; and (e) despite this level of control, attended and fixated objects were consolidated into VWM regardless of task relevance. These results are consistent with a model of VWM control in which each fixated object is automatically encoded into VWM, replacing a portion of the content in VWM. However, task-relevant objects can be selectively protected from replacement.

Differential roles for parietal and occipital cortices in visual working memory

Visual working memory (VWM) is known as a highly capacity-limited cognitive system that can hold 3–4 items. Recent studies have demonstrated that activity in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and occipital cortices correlates with the number of representations held in VWM. However, differences among those regions are poorly understood, particularly when task-irrelevant items are to be ignored. The present fMRI-based study investigated whether memory load-sensitive regions such as the IPS and occipital cortices respond differently to task-relevant information. Using a change detection task in which participants are required to remember pre-specified targets, here we show that while the IPS exhibited comparable responses to both targets and distractors, the dorsal occipital cortex manifested significantly weaker responses to an array containing distractors than to an array containing only targets, despite that the number of objects presented was the same for the two arrays. These results suggest that parietal and occipital cortices engage differently in distractor processing and that the dorsal occipital, rather than parietal, activity appears to reflect output of stimulus filtering and selection based on behavioral relevance.

Shifting attention among working memory representations: testing cue type, awareness, and strategic control

It is well known that visual working memory (VWM) performance is modulated by attentional cues presented during encoding. Interestingly, retrospective cues presented after encoding, but prior to the test phase also improve performance. This improvement in performance is termed the retro-cue benefit. We investigated whether the retro-cue benefit is sensitive to cue type, whether participants were aware of their improvement in performance due to the retro-cue, and whether the effect was under strategic control. Experiment 1 compared the potential cueing benefits of abrupt onset retro-cues relying on bottom-up attention, number retro-cues relying on top-down attention, and arrow retro-cues, relying on a mixture of both. We found a significant retro-cue effect only for arrow retro-cues. In Experiment 2, we tested participants' awareness of their use of the informative retro-cue and found that they were aware of their improved performance. In Experiment 3, we asked whether participants have strategic control over the retro-cue. The retro-cue was difficult to ignore, suggesting that strategic control is low. The retro-cue effect appears to be within conscious awareness but not under full strategic control.

Task-irrelevant memory load induces inattentional blindness without temporo-parietal suppression

We often fail to consciously detect an unexpected object when we are engaged in an attention-demanding task (inattentional blindness). The inattentional blindness which is induced by visual short-term memory (VSTM) load has been proposed to result from a suppression of temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) activity that involves stimulus-driven attention. However, the fact that, inversely proportional to TPJ activity, intraparietal sulcus (IPS) activity correlates with VSTM load renders questionable the account of inattentional blindness based only on TPJ activity. Here, we investigated whether the TPJ is solely responsible for inattentional blindness by decoupling IPS and TPJ responses to VSTM load and then using the same manipulation to test the behavioral inattentional blindness performance. Experiment 1 showed that TPJ activity was not suppressed by task-irrelevant load while the IPS responded to both task-relevant and task-irrelevant load. Although the TPJ account of inattentional blindness predicts that the degree of inattentional blindness should track TPJ activity, we found in Experiment 2 that inattentional blindness was induced not only by task-relevant load but also by task-irrelevant load, showing inconsistency between the extent of inattentional blindness and TPJ response. These findings suggest that inattentional blindness can be induced without suppression of TPJ activity and seem to offer the possibility that the IPS contributes to conscious perception.