Current directions in visual working memory research: An introduction and emerging insights

Visual working memory (VWM) is a core construct in the cognitive (neuro-)sciences, assumed to serve as a hub for information exchange and thus supporting a multitude of cognitive functions related to processing visual information. Here, we give an introduction into key terms and paradigms and an overview of ongoing debates in the field, to which the articles collected in this Special Issue on 'Current Directions in Visual Working Memory Research' contribute. Our aim is to extract, from this overview, some 'emerging' theoretical insights concerning questions such as the optimal way to examine VWM, which types of mental representations contribute to performance on VWM tasks, and how VWM keeps features from the same object together and apart from features of concurrently maintained objects (the binding problem)

Saliency maps for finding changes in visual scenes?

Sudden changes in the environment reliably summon attention. This rapid change detection appears to operate in a similar fashion as pop-out in visual search, the phenomenon that very salient stimuli are directly attended, independently of the number of distracting objects. Pop-out is usually explained by the workings of saliency maps, i.e., map-like representations that code for the conspicuity at each location of the visual field. While past research emphasized similarities between pop-out search and change detection, our study highlights differences between the saliency computations in the two tasks: in contrast to pop-out search, saliency computation in change detection (i) operates independently across different stimulus properties (e.g., color and orientation), and (ii) is little influenced by trial history. These deviations from pop-out search are not due to idiosyncrasies of the stimuli or task design, as evidenced by a replication of standard findings in a comparable visual-search design. To explain these results, we outline a model of change detection involving the computation of feature-difference maps, which explains the known similarities and differences with visual search

#EEGManyLabs: Investigating the Replicability of Influential EEG Experiments

There is growing awareness across the neuroscience community that the replicability of findings about the relationship between brain activity and cognitive phenomena can be improved by conducting studies with high statistical power that adhere to well-defined and standardised analysis pipelines. Inspired by recent efforts from the psychological sciences, and with the desire to examine some of the foundational findings using electroencephalography (EEG), we have launched #EEGManyLabs, a large-scale international collaborative replication effort. Since its discovery in the early 20th century, EEG has had a profound influence on our understanding of human cognition, but there is limited evidence on the replicability of some of the most highly cited discoveries. After a systematic search and selection process, we have identified 27 of the most influential and continually cited studies in the field. We plan to directly test the replicability of key findings from 20 of these studies in teams of at least three independent laboratories. The design and protocol of each replication effort will be submitted as a Registered Report and peer-reviewed prior to data collection. Prediction markets, open to all EEG researchers, will be used as a forecasting tool to examine which findings the community expects to replicate. This project will update our confidence in some of the most influential EEG findings and generate a large open access database that can be used to inform future research practices. Finally, through this international effort, we hope to create a cultural shift towards inclusive, high-powered multi-laboratory collaborations. © 2021 The Authors

No evidence that self-rated negative emotion boosts visual working memory precision.

Emotion is assumed to change how people process information by modulating attentional focus. Two recent studies (Spachtholz et al., 2014; Xie & Zhang, 2016) reported that self-reported negative emotion boosted the precision with which information was stored in visual working memory. Here we attempted and failed to replicate these findings across seven studies conducted in four countries. Emotion was induced by presenting emotional images (negative, neutral, and positive) before each trial of a visual working memory task (six experiments) or the images were combined with emotional music during a 3-min induction phase (one experiment) occurring prior to the memory task. In the visual working memory task, participants stored (emotionally neutral) continuously varying colored dots or oriented triangles. At test, the color or orientation of a probed item was reproduced. Although participants reported changes in their emotional state commensurate with the manipulations, six experiments showed substantial evidence against changes in visual working memory precision (and quantity) under negative (and positive) emotion in comparison with neutral, whereas one condition, in one study, showed increased precision under both negative and positive emotion compared with neutral. These results challenge the view that emotion modulates visual working memory quality and quantity

PD components and distractor inhibition in visual search: new evidence for the Signal Suppression Hypothesis

The hypothesis that salient distractors in visual search are actively suppressed is supported by the fact that these objects elicit PD components believed to be associated with inhibition. This account was challenged by Kerzel and Burra (2020), who found that a PD to lateral colour singleton distractors was followed by a contralateral negativity, which they interpreted as an N2pc indicative of attentional capture. As this would be at odds with successful distractor suppression, they proposed an alternative lateral-first serial scanning hypothesis, which assumes that the PD might actually be an N2pc elicited when a lateral context item is selected. We tested this hypothesis by measuring lateralized ERP components to search displays with two lateral and two vertical midline items, including a colour singleton and a shape-defined target. Colour singletons triggered PD components not only in blocks where attention was unfocused because target location was unpredictable, but critically also in blocks where targets only appeared on the midline and participants had no reason to attend to lateral items. This is inconsistent with the serial scanning hypothesis and supports the idea that the PD reflects signal suppression. PD components to singleton distractors were followed by a contralateral negativity, which we interpreted as a second PD elicited by non-salient distractors on the opposite side. Our sequential inhibition account reconciles conflicting results of recent studies and emphasizes the role of inhibitory processes during attentional target selection in visual search