Attending and inhibiting stimuli that match the contents of visual working memory: Evidence from eye movements and pupillometry

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1 Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, UMR 7290, CNRS / Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France
2 Department of Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1478v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Neuroscience, Psychiatry and Psychology
Keywords
visual attention, visual working memory, pupillometry, eye movements
Copyright
© 2015 Mathôt et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Mathôt S, Van Heusden E, Van der Stigchel S. 2015. Attending and inhibiting stimuli that match the contents of visual working memory: Evidence from eye movements and pupillometry. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1478v1

Abstract

When you keep a red apple in working memory, your attention is usually—but not always—attracted by other red objects. The conditions under which the contents of visual working memory guide visual attention are still unclear. Here we tested whether attention is indeed biased toward memory-match stimuli, and, if so, whether this bias is transient or sustained. We used a new pupillometric technique, which exploits that the pupil is larger when you covertly attend to dark, compared to bright, stimuli. This allowed us to test whether and when attention was biased toward memory-match stimuli, by placing them either on a dark or a bright background, while measuring pupil size over time. We found that the eyes were captured by memory-match probes early on in the trial. However, the pupillary data suggested that there was no sustained attention bias toward memory-match probes later in time; rather, attention appeared to be biased away from them. Together, our results suggest that: (1) memory-match stimuli automatically capture attention; but (2) they do so only briefly; and (3) they may even become inhibited later in time.

Author Comment

This is a manuscript in preparation, and will be submitted to a peer-reviewed venue.