Ding Yun, Naber Marnix, Paffen Chris, Gayet Surya, Van der Stigchel Stefan
Department of Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Department of Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Conscious Cogn. 2021 Jan;87:103057. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2020.103057. Epub 2020 Dec 8.
The content of visual working memory influences the access to visual awareness. Thus far, research has focused on retention of a single feature, whereas memoranda in real life typically contain multiple features. Here, we intermixed a delayed match-to-sample task to manipulate VWM content, and a breaking Continuous Flash Suppression (b-CFS) task to measure prioritization for visual awareness. Observers memorized either the color (Exp. 1), the shape (Exp. 2) or both the features (Exp. 3) of an item and indicated the location of a suppressed target. We observed that color-matching targets broke suppression faster than color-mismatching targets both when color was memory relevant or irrelevant. Shape only impacted priority for visual awareness through an interaction with color. We conclude that: (1) VWM can regulate the priority of visual information to access visual awareness along a single feature dimension; (2) different features of a memorandum vary in their potency to impact access to visual awareness, and the more dominant feature may even suppress the effect of the less dominant feature; (3) even stimuli that match an irrelevant feature dimension of the memorandum can be prioritized for visual awareness.
视觉工作记忆的内容会影响对视觉意识的获取。到目前为止，研究主要集中在单一特征的保留上，而现实生活中的记忆内容通常包含多个特征。在此，我们将一个用于操纵视觉工作记忆内容的延迟样本匹配任务，与一个用于测量视觉意识优先级的打破持续闪光抑制（b-CFS）任务混合使用。观察者记住一个项目的颜色（实验1）、形状（实验2）或两个特征（实验3），并指出被抑制目标的位置。我们观察到，无论颜色与记忆是否相关，颜色匹配的目标比颜色不匹配的目标更快地打破抑制。形状仅通过与颜色的相互作用影响视觉意识的优先级。我们得出以下结论：（1）视觉工作记忆可以沿着单一特征维度调节视觉信息获取视觉意识的优先级；（2）记忆内容的不同特征在影响视觉意识获取的效力上有所不同，更占主导地位的特征甚至可能抑制较不占主导地位特征的效果；（3）即使是与记忆内容不相关特征维度匹配的刺激，也可以在视觉意识中被优先处理。
