title: Are multiple visual short-term memory storages necessary to explain the retro-cue effect?
abstract: Recent research has shown that change detection performance is enhanced when, during the retention interval, attention is cued to the location of the upcoming test item. This retro-cue advantage has led some researchers to suggest that visual short-term memory (VSTM) is divided into a durable, limited-capacity storage and a more fragile, high-capacity storage. Consequently, performance is poor on the no-cue trials because fragile VSTM is overwritten by the test display and only durable VSTM is accessible under these conditions. In contrast, performance is improved in the retro-cue condition because attention keeps fragile VSTM accessible. The aim of the present study was to test the assumptions underlying this two-storage account. Participants were asked to encode an array of colors for a change detection task involving no-cue and retro-cue trials. A retro-cue advantage was found even when the cue was presented after a visual (Experiment 1) or a central (Experiment 2) interference. Furthermore, the magnitude of the interference was comparable between the no-cue and retro-cue trials. These data undermine the main empirical support for the two-storage account and suggest that the presence of a retro-cue benefit cannot be used to differentiate between different VSTM storages.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Sciences, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN, USA. tal.makovski@gmail.com
authors.forename: Tal
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Makovski
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult