Are irrelevant items actively deleted from visual working memory?: No evidence from repulsion and attraction effects in dual-retrocue tasks.

ABSTRACT: Some theories propose that working memory (WM) involves the active deletion of irrelevant information, including items that were retained in WM, but are no longer relevant for ongoing cognition. Considerable evidence suggests that active-deletion occurs for categorical representations, but whether it also occurs for recall of features that are typically bound together in an object, such as line orientations, is unclear. In two experiments, with or without binding instructions, healthy young adults maintained two orientations, focused attention to recall the orientation cued first, and then switched attention to recall the orientation cued second, at which point the uncued orientation was no longer relevant on the trial. In contrast to the active-deletion hypothesis, the results showed that

SUBMITTER: Rhilinger JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10208559 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature