title: Retro-dimension-cue benefit in visual working memory.
abstract: In visual working memory (VWM) tasks, participants' performance can be improved by a retro-object-cue. However, previous studies have not investigated whether participants' performance can also be improved by a retro-dimension-cue. Three experiments investigated this issue. We used a recall task with a retro-dimension-cue in all experiments. In Experiment 1, we found benefits from retro-dimension-cues compared to neutral cues. This retro-dimension-cue benefit is reflected in an increased probability of reporting the target, but not in the probability of reporting the non-target, as well as increased precision with which this item is remembered. Experiment 2 replicated the retro-dimension-cue benefit and showed that the length of the blank interval after the cue disappeared did not influence recall performance. Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiment 2 with a lower memory load. Our studies provide evidence that there is a robust retro-dimension-cue benefit in VWM. Participants can use internal attention to flexibly allocate cognitive resources to a particular dimension of memory representations. The results also support the feature-based storing hypothesis.
authors: Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, 116029, China.|Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, 40014, Finland.
authors: Chaoxiong
authors: C
authors: Ye
authors: Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, 116029, China.
authors: Zhonghua
authors: Z
authors: Hu
authors: Department of Mathematical Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, 40014, Finland.
authors: Tapani
authors: T
authors: Ristaniemi
authors: Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
authors: Maria
authors: M
authors: Gendron
authors: Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, 116029, China.|Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China.
authors: Qiang
authors: Q
authors: Liu
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011939:Mental Recall; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D055815:Young Adult