Liu Ruyi, Guo Lijing, Lin Xiaoshu, Nie Dan, Astikainen Piia, Ye Chaoxiong
School of Education, Anyang Normal University, Anyang, China.
Institute of Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, China.
Front Psychol. 2024 Nov 1;15:1433405. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1433405. eCollection 2024.
Within the maintenance phase of visual working memory (VWM), previous researchers presented retro-cues orienting to a probed dimension across all multidimension stimuli and found a robust dimension-based retro-cue benefit (RCB): VWM performance for cued dimension was better than no/neutral-cue baseline. This improvement is often attributed to the prioritization of information related to the focused dimension and the removal of information related to the unfocused dimension from VWM. However, it remains unclear whether the removal of the uncued dimension is necessary to observe this dimension-based RCB.
In the current study, we first manipulated the number of retro-cues to investigate this question. We used colored, oriented bars as stimuli and two sequential retro-cues oriented to different dimensions in the double-cue condition. The last presented cue in each trial was always valid. Therefore, the unfocused dimension in the first cue display was probed in double-cue trials. Experiment 1 adopted change detection tasks and three cue type conditions (no-cue, single-cue, double-cue). Experiment 2 divided the single-cue condition into early- and late- cue conditions, using recall tasks to elevated probe precision. Experiment 3 further added double-neutral and double-same cue types and eliminated the different influences of post-memory masks on each dimension respectively.
Results across these experiments showed a robust pattern of no worse performances for the double-cue condition than for the single-cue condition.
Because the dimension-based single cue benefit was observed especially in early-cue trials, we supposed that the dimension-based RCB does not require removing the unfocused dimension from VWM.
在视觉工作记忆（VWM）的维持阶段，先前的研究人员呈现了逆向线索，这些线索指向所有多维度刺激中的一个被探测维度，并发现了一种强大的基于维度的逆向线索益处（RCB）：线索维度的VWM表现优于无/中性线索基线。这种改善通常归因于与聚焦维度相关的信息的优先化以及从VWM中去除与未聚焦维度相关的信息。然而，尚不清楚去除未提示维度对于观察这种基于维度的RCB是否必要。
在当前研究中，我们首先操纵逆向线索的数量来研究这个问题。我们使用彩色、有方向的条形作为刺激，并在双线索条件下使用两个指向不同维度的连续逆向线索。每个试验中最后呈现的线索总是有效的。因此，在双线索试验中探测了第一个线索显示中未聚焦的维度。实验1采用了变化检测任务和三种线索类型条件（无线索、单线索、双线索）。实验2将单线索条件分为早期线索条件和晚期线索条件，使用回忆任务来提高探测精度。实验3进一步增加了双中性和双相同线索类型，并分别消除了记忆后掩蔽对每个维度的不同影响。
这些实验的结果显示了一种稳健的模式，即双线索条件下的表现不比单线索条件下差。
因为特别是在早期线索试验中观察到了基于维度的单线索益处，我们推测基于维度的RCB不需要从VWM中去除未聚焦的维度。
