Ep.59. Can You Improve Your Visual Working Memory By Thinking About It?

"The contributions of visual and central attention to visual working memory" by Alessandra S. Souza & Klaus Oberauer Summary This 2017 paper by Souza and Oberauer investigates the interplay between attention and visual working memory (WM). Through three experiments using dual-task paradigms and a novel "guided refreshing" technique, they demonstrate that maintaining visual information in WM relies primarily on central attention, as opposed to visual attention. Specifically, interfering with central attention significantly impaired WM performance, while disrupting visual attention had a negligible effect. This finding contrasts with multiple object tracking, a task shown to heavily depend on visual attention. The authors conclude that central attention, likely through a "refreshing" mechanism, plays a crucial role in strengthening and protecting visual representations in WM.

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