title: Pop-out and pop-in: Visual working memory advantages for unique items.
abstract: Attentional control is thought to play a critical role in determining the amount of information that can be stored and retrieved from visual working memory (VWM). We tested whether and how task-irrelevant feature-based salience, known to affect the control of visual attention, affects VWM performance. Our results show that features of a task-irrelevant color singleton are more likely to be recalled from VWM than non-singleton items and that this increased memorability comes at a cost to the other items in the display. Furthermore, the singleton effect in VWM was negatively correlated with an individual's baseline VWM capacity. Taken together, these results suggest that individual differences in VWM storage capacity may be partially attributable to the ability to ignore differences in task-irrelevant physical salience.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G3, Canada. jason.rajsic@mail.utoronto.ca.
authors.forename: Jason
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rajsic
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G3, Canada.
authors.forename: Sol Z
authors.initials: SZ
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G3, Canada.
authors.forename: Lauren
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Huxtable
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G3, Canada.
authors.forename: Jay
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pratt
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G3, Canada.|Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Susanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ferber
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attention and memory; Attention capture; Cognitive and attentional control; Visual working memory