Abstract
Over the past decade, it has been debated whether retaining bindings in working memory requires more attention than retaining constituent features, focusing on domain-general attention and space-based attention. In the current study we hypothesized that retaining bindings in working memory needs more amodal object-based attention than retaining single features. In a change detection task, we tested three typical bindings, which had been suggested requiring no more attention than the constituent features: The two constituent features of binding were stored in different working memory modules (cross-module binding, Experiment 1), from auditory and visual modalities (cross-modal binding, Experiment 2), or spatially separated (cross-space visual binding, Experiments 3 and 4). In the critical condition, we added a secondary object feature-report task during the delay interval of the change-detection task, such that the secondary task competed for object-based attention with the to-be-memorized stimuli. Moreover, the secondary task was presented in either visual (Experiments 1-3) or auditory (Experiment 4) modality. If more amodal object-based attention is required for retaining bindings than for retaining constituent features in working memory, the attention-demanding secondary task should impair the binding performance to a larger degree relative to the performance of constituent features. In congruent with this prediction, Experiments 1–4 consistently revealed a significantly larger impairment for bindings than for the constituent features, regardless of the modality of the secondary task.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016