title: Attentional cueing by cross-modal congruency produces both facilitation and inhibition on short-term visual recognition.
abstract: The attentional modulation of performance in a memory task, comparable to the one obtained in a perceptual task, is at the focus of contemporary research. We hypothesized that a biphasic effect (namely, facilitation followed by inhibition) can be obtained in visual working memory when attention is cued towards one item of the memorandum and participants must recognize a delayed probe as being identical to any item of the memorandum. In every trial, a delayed spiky/curvy probe appeared centrally, to be matched with the same-category shape maintained in visual working memory which could be either physically identical (positive trials) or only categorically similar (negative trials). To orient the participant's attention towards a selected portion of a two-item memorandum, a (tzk/wow) sound was played simultaneously with two lateral visual shapes (one spiky and one curved). Our results indicate that an exogenous attentional shift during perception of the memorandum, induced by a congruent audio-visual pairing, first facilitates and then inhibits the recognition of a cued item (but not of a non-cued item) stored in visual working memory. A coherent pattern of individual differences emerged, indicating that the amount of early facilitation in congruent-sound trials was negatively correlated with recognition sensitivity in no-sound trials (suggesting that the inverse effectiveness rule may also apply to memory) and positively correlated with later inhibition, as well as with the self-reported susceptibility to memory failures.
authors.affiliation: Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy; Psychology Unit, Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Makovac
authors.affiliation: Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Sze Chai
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Kwok
authors.affiliation: Psychology Unit, Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Gerbino
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attention; Cross-modal binding; Inhibition of return; Inverse effectiveness rule; Multisensory integration; Visual working memory