The Role of Attentional Guidance in Visual Working Memory Precision Development

• In Event: What's that? How Visual Distraction May Help, or Hinder, Infants' and Children's Memory

Abstract

Introduction. Visual working memory (VWM) improves dramatically during childhood but what drives this improvement is not well understood. One influential account thus far has been a simple increase in storage capacity. However, recent findings have challenged this single account: differences in the ability to use guided attention to boost the maintenance of internal representations are also important for understanding developmental improvements in VWM and multiple non-exclusive factors seem to be at play, painting a multi-factorial, complex and dynamic picture of VWM development.

Methods. In this study, we aimed to examine whether the developing ability to orient attention to internal representations influences VWM precision differentially for children than for adults. To do so, we employed a paradigm that combined a continuous-recall VWM task with a partial-cueing report task. Specifically, seven-year-olds (N=31) and young adults (N=39) were asked to reproduce the colour of a probe item in a colour-wheel. The initial memory array, which included the probe item, could be uncued or followed by a spatial cue (retrocue) that directed participants’ attention to a location in the memory array.

Results and Conclusions. Results showed that attentional biases engendered by retro-cues facilitated fidelity (overall precision) of VWM compared to uncued, baseline performance, for both age groups, but to a smaller degree in 7-year-olds compared to adults, F(1,67) = 9.69, p =.003, ηp2 =.13. These findings therefore suggest influences of guided attention on the fidelity of representations in VWM. Importantly, investigating modelling parameters suggested that children demonstrate lower representational fidelity of items in VWM compared to adults, F(1,65)=83.86, p<.001, ηp2=.56, and that spatial attentional cues improve overall precision by increasing the probability of target storage, maintenance and recall, as well as by reducing misbinding errors and random guessing, but they do so less efficiently than for adults(F(1,65)=35.83, p<.001,ηp2=.36; F(1,65)=12.52, p=.001, ηp2=.16; and F(1,65)=12.78, p=.001, ηp2=.16 for the age x cue condition interactions for probability of target storage, misbinding errors and random guessing respectively). These results extend further our knowledge on the relation between guided attention and VWM development. More broadly, they suggest that attentional guidance plays a role at multiple stages in the flow to successful retrieval from VWM.

Authors

• Andria Shimi, University of Cyprus
  Presenting Author

• Gaia Scerif, University of Oxford
  Non-Presenting Author