Ding Yun, Paffen Chris L E, Naber Marnix, Van der Stigchel Stefan
Department of Experimental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
J Vis. 2019 Sep 3;19(11):9. doi: 10.1167/19.11.9.
Both visual working memory (VWM) and visual saliency influence sensory processing, as is evident from research on visual attention and visual awareness. It is generally observed that items that are memorized or salient receive priority in visual search and in the access to awareness. Here we investigate whether these two factors interact and together boost access to visual awareness more than each factor independently. In the present experiment, we manipulated the VWM relevance and saliency of an item through a color memorization task and color uniqueness, respectively. We applied continuous flash suppression (CFS) to suppress items from visual awareness. The color of the suppressed items could either be congruent or incongruent with the memorized color, and either stood out from its surrounding distractors (salient pop out) or not. The item's priority for visual awareness was measured by measuring the time it took for an item to "break" into awareness. We first show that VWM relevance and visual saliency each shortened the time needed for an item to access awareness. More interestingly, the combined effect of VWM and visual salience was additive; that is, items that were both congruent and salient broke into visual awareness even faster. A race model further suggests that the interaction between these two mechanisms can be explained by statistical facilitation. Thus, VWM and saliency influence the priority to access visual awareness independently.
视觉工作记忆（VWM）和视觉显著性都会影响感觉加工，这在视觉注意和视觉意识的研究中很明显。一般观察到，被记忆的或显著的项目在视觉搜索和进入意识方面具有优先权。在这里，我们研究这两个因素是否相互作用，以及它们共同作用时对视觉意识的促进作用是否大于各自独立作用时。在本实验中，我们分别通过颜色记忆任务和颜色独特性来操纵一个项目的VWM相关性和显著性。我们应用连续闪烁抑制（CFS）来抑制项目进入视觉意识。被抑制项目的颜色可以与记忆颜色一致或不一致，并且可以从周围的干扰物中突出（显著弹出）或不突出。通过测量一个项目“闯入”意识所需的时间来衡量其在视觉意识中的优先权。我们首先表明，VWM相关性和视觉显著性各自都缩短了一个项目进入意识所需的时间。更有趣的是，VWM和视觉显著性的联合效应是相加的；也就是说，既一致又显著的项目进入视觉意识的速度甚至更快。一个竞争模型进一步表明，这两种机制之间的相互作用可以用统计促进来解释。因此，VWM和显著性独立地影响进入视觉意识的优先权。
