Attentional control settings and visual working memory (preprint)

In the present study, we examined whether visual working memory (VWM) can support attentional control settings (ACSs) by maintaining representations of the visual properties that should capture attention. Beyond enhancing capture by memory-matching stimuli, can VWM representations suppress capture by non-matching stimuli? In Experiments 1a/b, participants maintained a colour in VWM that changed every trial while completing a Posner cueing task with memory matching and memory non-matching colour cues. We replicated the conventional finding that the colour in VWM modulated distractor costs, indicating that the colour was represented in the active state. Yet, this colour had no effect on the capture of visual spatial attention measured via cueing effects, suggesting that merely remembering a colour in VWM did not define participants’ ACSs. When participants searched for the colour in VWM, it did support an ACS that eliminated cueing effects by non-matching colours (Experiment 2), though not if participants searched for two colours stored in VWM (Experiment 3). These findings demonstrate that one active representation in VWM can support ACSs, though active representation alone is insufficient. These findings also speak to the ongoing debate about the automaticity of attentional capture by contributing additional evidence that distractor costs and cueing effects are dissociable measures of attentional capture.