Contributions of Retrospective Attentional Control to Visual Working Memory Performance: Insights From the Developing Cognitive System

• In Event: Cueing and Capture: How Children Develop the Ability to Direct and Redirect Attention

Abstract

Visual working memory (VWM) capacity is highly limited, yet this limit changes over development. One prominent account aiming to explain improvements in VWM performance across development proposes a simple increase in storage capacity. However, recent findings have shown that the developing ability to use retrospective attentional control to enhance maintenance is important for understanding developmental improvements in VWM. Critically, changes in retrospective attentional control are not the endpoint to understanding developmental differences in VWM, rather additional factors seem to mediate the interaction between the two cognitive mechanisms.

Methods. In a series of studies, we aimed to examine whether the developing ability to orient attention retrospectively to internal representations constrains VWM capacity and/or precision in 7-year-olds but not in adults. In the first study, seven-year-olds (N=67) and young adults (N=56) carried out a paradigm that combined a single probe recognition task with the partial-cueing task, during which they were asked to respond as to whether a probe item was part of the initial memory array. In the second study, a new sample of seven-year-olds (N=31) and young adults (N=39) carried out a paradigm that combined a continuous-colour recall VWM task with the partial-cueing task, during which they were asked to reproduce the colour of a probe item in a colour-wheel. In both studies, the memory array could be followed by a spatial retrocue that guided participants’ attention to the likely location of the to-be-probed item or by a neutral cue that did not provide any spatial information.

Results. In the first study, both 7-year-olds and adults applied attentional biases when they were required to maintain a higher memory load in VWM, however, these biases were constrained by time in 7-year-olds, indicating that memory load and time constrain 7-year-olds’ VWM capacity differentially than adults. In the second study, attentional biases engendered by retro-cues increased storage capacity and facilitated overall precision of VWM representations compared to neutral, baseline performance, for all participants, but to a smaller degree in 7-year-olds than in adults, suggesting differential influences of retrospective attentional control on the precision of representations in VWM for the two age groups. Critically, investigation of modelling parameters showed that 7-year-olds retain items in VWM with lower representational quality than adults, however retrocues increased the probability of target storage, maintenance and recall, as well as reduced misbinding errors and random guessing.

Conclusions. Findings from these studies collectively indicate how retrospective attentional control facilitates maintenance in VWM and reveal the mechanisms driving improvements in VWM limits from childhood into adulthood. A proposed integrative model of VWM considers distinct attentional processes and multiple factors of cognitive development that all together contribute to VWM development.

Author

• Andria Shimi, University of Cyprus
  Presenting Author