Koevoet Damian, Naber Marnix, Strauch Christoph, Van der Stigchel Stefan
Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
J Cogn. 2024 Jan 9;7(1):8. doi: 10.5334/joc.336. eCollection 2024.
Not only is visual attention shifted to objects in the external world, attention can also be directed to objects in memory. We have recently shown that pupil size indexes how strongly items are attended externally, which was reflected in more precise encoding into visual working memory. Using a retro-cuing paradigm, we here replicated this finding by showing that stronger pupil constrictions during encoding were reflective of the depth of encoding. Importantly, we extend this previous work by showing that pupil size also revealed the intensity of internal attention toward content stored in visual working memory. Specifically, pupil dilation during the prioritization of one among multiple internally stored representations predicted the precision of the prioritized item. Furthermore, the dynamics of the pupillary responses revealed that the intensity of internal and external attention independently determined the precision of internalized visual representations. Our results show that both internal and external attention are not all-or-none processes, but should rather be thought of as continuous resources that can be deployed at varying intensities. The employed pupillometric approach allows to unravel the intricate interplay between internal and external attention and their effects on visual working memory.
视觉注意力不仅会转移到外部世界的物体上，注意力还可以指向记忆中的物体。我们最近发现，瞳孔大小可指示外部对物体的关注程度，这反映在视觉工作记忆中更精确的编码上。使用回溯提示范式，我们在此通过表明编码期间更强的瞳孔收缩反映了编码深度来复制这一发现。重要的是，我们扩展了先前的工作，表明瞳孔大小还揭示了对存储在视觉工作记忆中的内容的内部关注强度。具体而言，在对多个内部存储表征中的一个进行优先级排序期间的瞳孔扩张预测了被优先排序项目的精度。此外，瞳孔反应的动态变化表明，内部和外部注意力的强度独立地决定了内化视觉表征的精度。我们的结果表明，内部和外部注意力都不是全有或全无的过程，而应被视为可以以不同强度部署的连续资源。所采用的瞳孔测量方法有助于揭示内部和外部注意力之间复杂的相互作用及其对视觉工作记忆的影响。
