Unraveling the binding problem in working memory: insights from the hierarchical binding model.

The binding problem is a crucial issue in the study of working memory (WM) and remains a central topic of debate among various WM models. Over the past decade, we have explored feature binding within WM, guided by the Hierarchical Binding Model (HBM). This model suggests that WM binding occurs in two stages: an initial implicit binding involving rapid, coarse feature processing, followed by explicit binding where focused attention refines these features via a reentry process. We found that implicit binding is closely related to the attentional processing of features during the perceptual stage. Basic features that can be rapidly and coarsely processed in parallel through spread attention are involuntarily extracted into WM along with the target features, forming a rough bound representation. For explicit binding, we examined the role of attention in retaining explicit binding in WM, emphasizing the unique role of reentry in the HBM. Our findings indicate that WM binding requires additional object attention through the reentry process. These results demonstrate that both implicit and explicit bindings are integral to WM and that the HBM is effective in elucidating the binding mechanisms within WM.

Boolean map and object reconcile as the unit of visual working memory.

The unit of visual working memory is a fundamental issue under debate in the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience, with some traditional research suggesting that it is an object, while other recent studies demonstrating that a Boolean map offers a better account. The controversy surrounding the unit of visual working memory often centers on the representation of objects consist of same dimensional features (e.g. bicolor objects). For 2 colors in a bicolor object, some behavioral studies have suggested that they need to be represented by separate units, while some other studies using electrophysiological measures have found that they can be represented within a single unit. This apparent conflict hints that Boolean map and object may reconcile as the unit of visual working memory. Adopting the contralateral delay activity as an electrophysiological marker of visual working memory, experiments 1 and 2 consistently found that the contralateral delay activity amplitude for memorizing bicolor circles at P7/P8 conformed the Boolean map-based storage throughout the whole maintenance, while the contralateral delay activity amplitude at P3/P4 just conformed the object-based storage during the early period. It suggests though Boolean map got stronger supporting evidence than object, they 2 may coexist as the unit of visual working memory.

Selectively maintaining an object's feature in visual working memory: A comparison between highly discriminable and fine-grained features.

Selectively maintaining information is an essential function of visual working memory (VWM). Recent VWM studies have mainly focused on selective maintenance of objects, leaving the mechanisms of selectively maintaining an object's feature in VWM unknown. Based on the interactive model of perception and VWM, we hypothesized that there are distinct selective maintenance mechanisms for objects containing fine-grained features versus objects containing highly discriminable features. To test this hypothesis, we first required participants to memorize a dual-feature object (colored simple shapes vs. colored polygons), and informed them about the target feature via a retro-cue. Then a visual search task was added to examine the fate of the irrelevant feature. The selective maintenance of an object's feature predicted that the irrelevant feature should be removed from the active state of VWM and should not capture attention when presented as a distractor in the visual search task. We found that irrelevant simple shapes impaired performance in the visual search task (Experiment 1). However, irrelevant polygons did not affect visual search performance (Experiment 2), and this could not be explained by decay of polygons (Experiment 3) or by polygons not capturing attention (Experiment 4). These findings suggest that VWM adopts dissociable mechanisms to selectively maintain an object's feature, depending on the feature's perceptual characteristics.

Children exhibit superior memory for attended but outdated information compared to adults.

Research on the development of cognitive selectivity predominantly focuses on attentional selection. The present study explores another facet of cognitive selectivity-memory selection-by examining the ability to filter attended yet outdated information in young children and adults. Across five experiments involving 130 children and 130 adults, participants are instructed to use specific information to complete a task, and then unexpectedly asked to report this information in a surprise test. The results consistently demonstrate a developmental reversal-like phenomenon, with children outperforming adults in reporting this kind of attended yet outdated information. Furthermore, we provide evidence against the idea that the results are due to different processing strategies or attentional deployments between adults and children. These results suggest that the ability of memory selection is not fully developed in young children, resulting in their inefficient filtering of attended yet outdated information that is not required for memory retention.

Hierarchical Constraints on the Distribution of Attention in Dynamic Displays.

Human vision is remarkably good at recovering the latent hierarchical structure of dynamic scenes. Here, we explore how visual attention operates with this hierarchical motion representation. The way in which attention responds to surface physical features has been extensively explored. However, we know little about how the distribution of attention can be distorted by the latent hierarchical structure. To explore this topic, we conducted two experiments to investigate the relationship between minimal graph distance (MGD), one key factor in hierarchical representation, and attentional distribution. In Experiment 1, we constructed three hierarchical structures consisting of two moving objects with different MGDs. In Experiment 2, we generated three moving objects from one hierarchy to eliminate the influence of different structures. Attention was probed by the classic congruent-incongruent cueing paradigm. Our results show that the cueing effect is significantly smaller when the MGD between two objects is shorter, which suggests that attention is not evenly distributed across multiple moving objects but distorted by their latent hierarchical structure. As neither the latent structure nor the graph distance was part of the explicit task, our results also imply that both the construction of hierarchical representation and the attention to that representation are spontaneous and automatic.

The object as the unit for state switching in visual working memory.

This study aimed to determine the unit for switching representational states in visual working memory (VWM). Two opposing hypotheses were investigated: (a) the unit of switching being a feature (feature-based hypothesis), and (b) the unit of switching being an object (object-based hypothesis). Participants (N = 180) were instructed to hold two features from either one or two objects in their VWM. The memory-driven attentional capture effect, suggesting that actively held information in VWM can cause attention to be drawn towards matched distractors, was employed to assess representational states of the first and second probed colors (indicated by a retro-cue). The results showed that only the feature indicated to be probed first could elicit memory related capture for the condition of separate objects. Importantly, features from an integrated object could guide attention regardless of the probe order. These findings were observed across three experiments involving features of different dimensions, same dimensions, or perceptual objects defined by Gestalt principles. They provide convergent evidence supporting the object-based hypothesis by indicating that features within a single object cannot exist in different states.

Unconscious prioritization for face-to-face people.

One central question in the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness is regarding the scope of human consciousness. There is a lively debate as to whether high-level information integration is necessarily dependent on consciousness. This study presents a new form of unconscious integration based on the facingness between two individuals. Using a breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm, Experiments 1-3 found that two facing human heads got a privilege in breaking into awareness compared to nonfacing pairs. Experiments 4 and 5 demonstrated that the breakthrough difference between facing and nonfacing pairs could not be attributed to low-level or mid-level factors. Experiments 6, 7a, and 7b showed that the unconscious priority of facing pairs was significantly diminished when the holistic processing of the two agents was disrupted. Experiments 8-11 demonstrated that the advantage of facing pairs was only observable for human agents and not for daily objects, directional arrows, or nonhuman animals. These findings have critical implications for better understanding the scope of human consciousness and the origins of social vision. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Microsaccades reflect attention shifts: a mini review of 20 years of microsaccade research.

Microsaccades are small, involuntary eye movements that occur during fixation. Since the 1950s, researchers have conducted extensive research on the role of microsaccades in visual information processing, and found that they also play an important role in human advanced visual cognitive activities. Research over the past 20 years further suggested that there is a close relationship between microsaccades and visual attention, yet lacking a timely review. The current article aims to provide a state-of-the-art review and bring microsaccades studies into the sight of attention research. We firstly introduce basic characteristics about microsaccades, then summarized the empirical evidence supporting the view that microsaccades can reflect both external (perception) and internal (working memory) attention shifts. We finally conclude and highlight three promising avenues for future research.

Act generously when others do so: Majority influence on young children's sharing behavior.

Children's sharing behavior is profoundly shaped by social norms within their society, and they can learn these norms by directly observing how most others share in their immediate environment. Here we systematically investigated the impact of majority influence on the sharing behavior of young Chinese children through three studies (N = 336, 168 girls). Four- and 6-year-olds were allowed to choose 10 favorite stickers and had an opportunity to engage in anonymous sharing. Before making the sharing decision, children were assigned to one of two conditions: watching a video in which three peers all shared 8 out of 10 stickers (i.e., the majority sharing condition) or making their decisions without watching the video (i.e., the control condition). Results showed that both the 4- and 6-year-old children shared more stickers in the majority sharing condition than in the control condition (Studies 1 & 2). Moreover, the influence of the majority had a stronger effect compared to the influence of a single role model. Children shared more stickers after observing three peers sharing, compared to watching one peer sharing three times (Study 2). Furthermore, children were less likely to copy the majority's non-sharing behavior when it came to giving away stickers without prosocial outcomes, which was particularly evident among 4-year-olds (Study 3). The results reveal that majority influence uniquely shapes children's sharing behavior and that children selectively follow the majority based on whether the behavior exhibits prosocial attributes. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/8qNNhf9754I?si=7YfpaFpcD_IjlXjJ RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Observing a majority of three peers' unanimous generous sharing promoted sharing behavior in both 4- and 6-year-olds. The influence of three peers on children's sharing was stronger than that of one peer sharing three times. Four-year-olds, but not 6-year-olds, did not copy the non-sharing behavior of the majority as it did not lead to prosocial outcomes.

Dual routes of chunking social interaction: Insights from grouping two agent actions in working memory.

Humans have evolved the sophisticated ability to extract social relations embedded in interactive entities. One typical demonstration is a social chunking phenomenon wherein the cognitive system chunks individual actions into a unified episode basing on perceived interactive actions. However, the mechanisms underlying social chunking remain to be elucidated. Most studies have adopted static images and manipulated interactions through agents' facingness (face-to-face vs. back-to-back). Connecting agents via directed contingent actions is crucial in forming real-life social interaction. Hence, we employed dynamic actions as stimuli, separated physical- and communicative-contingency interactive actions, and predicted that domain-general physical regularities and domain-specific social relationships are crucial in social interactions, respectively. We tested this prediction by using an involuntary chunking effect in working memory, wherein two individual actions are involuntarily chunked when containing task-irrelevant interactive information. We found that involuntary chunking occurred for both types of upright interactive actions (Experiments 1, 3, 5, and 6). Inverting actions erased the chunking of communicative- but not physical-contingency actions (Experiments 2, 4, and 5). The facingness of dyads did not participate in chunking physical-contingency actions but was a prerequisite for chunking communicative-contingency actions (Experiments 3 and 6). These results reveal the dual routes of chunking interactive actions. Moreover, they suggest that the chunking mechanisms of dynamic social interaction are distinct from those of static images, highlighting the importance of using dynamic stimuli to explore the mechanisms of social interaction in emerging people-watching interdisciplinarity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Flexibility Retained: Unimpaired Updating of Expectations in Schizophrenia.

Flexibly and actively updating expectations based on feedback is crucial for navigating daily life. Previous research has shown that people with schizophrenia (PSZ) have difficulty adjusting their expectations. However, there are studies suggesting otherwise. To explore this further, we used a novel trial-based expectation updating paradigm called attribute amnesia. In the task, the participants needed to report the location of a target stimulus among distractors in pre-surprise trials. In the surprise trial, they were unexpectedly asked to report the identity of the target before reporting its location. Afterward, control trials were conducted whereby the participants were asked the same questions as in the surprise trial. Notably, the surprise trial and control trials were nearly identical, except that the participants expected to be asked about identity information in the control trials but not in the surprise trial. Thus, an improvement in identity reporting accuracy in the control trials in comparison with the surprise trial indicated active updating of expectations. In the current study, a total of 63 PSZ and 60 healthy control subjects (HCS) were enrolled. We found that both the PSZ and the HCS were unable to report information that they had fully attended to (i.e., identity) in the surprise trial. However, both groups showed a significant improvement in reporting identity information even in the first control trial. Critically, there was no significant difference in the magnitude of improvement between the two groups. The current findings indicate that PSZ have the ability to update their expectations as quickly and flexibly as HCS, at least in the context of the current task. The possible factors that might contribute to the discrepancy regarding expectation updating are discussed.

Negative trait inference in behaviorally inhibited children influences their internalizing behaviors.

Behavioral inhibition (BI) is an early-appearing temperamental trait characterized by intense negative affect and withdrawal behaviors to novel and challenging situations. Inhibited children are more likely to display social withdrawal and experience an increased risk for internalizing problems. Trait inference, the way children interpret behaviors and infer the characteristics of others, may be one potential mechanism. The current study examined the individual differences of BI in trait inference using a cross-sectional design (Study 1, Age 4, N = 80, 38 boys, Chinese) and explored the role of trait inference (Age 4) in relation to early BI (Age 2) and later internalizing behaviors (Age 4) using a longitudinal design (Study 2, N = 163, 93 boys). Trait inference was measured by children's personality judgments after watching four pieces of behavioral information of animated actors in two conditions: a high positive information condition and a high negative information condition. We found that high BI children exhibited a more negative trait inference than low BI children did in two studies, except for the trait inference in the high negative information condition of Study 2. Besides, in Study 2, trait inference in the high positive information condition partially mediated the BI-internalizing behavior link, and such mediation effect was moderated by the level of trait inference. These findings highlight the contribution of social information processing in the social adjustment of children with extreme temperament and have implications for prevention and intervention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The development of commitment: Attention for intention.

Adhering to a partially defined plan requires an intentional commitment that curbs distracting desires conflicting with the planned course of action, enabling humans to act coherently over time. Two studies (N = 50, 27 girls, ages 5-6, Han Chinese, in Hangzhou, China, 2022.02-2022.03) explored the development of commitment to partial plans in a sequential decision-making task and the underlying cognitive capacity focusing on its correlation to attentional control. Results suggest that only 6-year-olds committed to partial plans (d = .51), and children's commitment ratio was positively correlated with the use of proactive control (r = .40). These findings indicate that intentional commitment does not develop simultaneously with intention understanding, but rather matures gradually with the development of attentional control.

Remembering Sets: Capacity Limit and Time Limit of Ensemble Representations in Working Memory.

In a constantly changing visual environment, the ability to extract and store ensemble representations plays a crucial role in efficiently processing and remembering complex visual information. However, how working memory maintains these ensemble representations remains unclear. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the limits and characteristics of ensemble representations in working memory using a change detection paradigm. Participants were presented with multiple sets of circles grouped by spatial proximity and were asked to memorize the mean diameter of the circles in each set. Results showed that working memory could stably maintain mean sizes of approximately two sets for at least four seconds. Moreover, the memory performance of ensembles was not affected by the number of circles within a set, suggesting that individual details were not stored in working memory. These results suggest that the visual system can effectively store ensembles in working memory without preserving detailed individual information.

Attention with or without working memory: mnemonic reselection of attended information.

Attention has been regarded as the 'gatekeeper' controlling what information gets selected into working memory. However, a new perspective has emerged with the discovery of attribute amnesia, a phenomenon revealing that people are frequently unable to report information they have just attended to moments ago. This report failure is thought to stem from a lack of consolidating the attended information into working memory, indicating a dissociation between attention and working memory. Building on these findings, a new concept called memory reselection is proposed to describe a secondary round of selection among the attended information. These discoveries challenge the conventional view of how attention and working memory are related and shed new light onto modeling attention and memory as dissociable processes.

Completeness out of incompleteness: Inferences from regularities in imperfect information ensembles.

Handling imperfect information problems is fundamental to perception, learning, and decision-making. Ensemble perception may partially overcome imperfect information by providing global clues. However, if not all cluster elements are readily accessible, the observations required for computing statistics are incomplete. In this case, these elements' internal correlations (i.e., regularity) could serve as clues to elucidate the missing pieces. We thus investigated spatial regularity's role in ensemble perception under imperfect information situations created using partially occluded stimuli. In two experiments, we manipulated circle size (Experiment 1) and line orientation (Experiment 2) to linearly vary with its location; spatial regularity thus supplied clues for inferring information of the invisible parts. Participants estimated the mean of the targeted feature of the entire cluster, including visible and invisible parts. We observed robust biases toward the overall cluster in the estimations, implying the invisible parts were considered during ensemble perception. We proposed this effect could be understood as assessing evidence from visible parts to construct the missing parts. Experiment 3 employed a periodicity regularity to deter participants from using specific strategies, and consistent results were found. We then developed a generative model, the Regularity-Based Model, to simulate the inference process, which better captured the pattern of human outcomes than the comparative model. These findings indicate the visual system could use high-level structural information to infer scenes with incomplete information, thus producing more accurate ensemble representations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Intention beyond desire: Spontaneous intentional commitment regulates conflicting desires.

The human mind is a mosaic composed of multiple selves with conflicting desires. How can coherent actions emerge from such conflicts? Classical desire theory argues that rational action depends on maximizing the expected utilities evaluated by all desires. In contrast, intention theory suggests that humans regulate conflicting desires with an intentional commitment that constrains action planning towards a fixed goal. Here, we designed a series of 2D navigation games in which participants were instructed to navigate to two equally desirable destinations. We focused on the critical moments in navigation to test whether humans spontaneously commit to an intention and take actions that would be qualitatively different from those of a purely desire-driven agent. Across four experiments, we found three distinctive signatures of intentional commitment that only exist in human actions: "goal perseverance" as the persistent pursuit of an original intention despite unexpected drift making the intention suboptimal; "self-binding" as the proactive binding of oneself to a committed future by avoiding a path that could lead to many futures; and "temporal leap" as the commitment to a distant future even before reaching the proximal one. These results suggest that humans spontaneously form an intention with a committed plan to quarantine conflicting desires from actions, supporting intention as a distinctive mental state beyond desire. Additionally, our findings shed light on the possible functions of intention, such as reducing computational load and making one's actions more predictable in the eyes of a third-party observer.

Working-Memory-Guided Attention Competes with Exogenous Attention but Not with Endogenous Attention.

Recent research has extensively investigated working memory (WM)-guided attention, which is the phenomenon of attention being directed towards information in the external environment that matches the content stored in WM. While prior studies have focused on the potential influencing factors of WM-guided attention, little is known about the nature of it. This attention system exhibits characteristics of two classical distinct attention systems: exogenous attention and endogenous attention, as it can operate automatically like exogenous attention yet persist for a long time and be modulated by cognitive resources like endogenous attention. Thus, the current study aimed to explore the mechanism of WM-guided attention by testing whether it competed with exogenous attention, endogenous attention, or both. Two experiments were conducted within a classic WM-guided attention paradigm. Experiment 1 included an exogenous cue and revealed an interaction between WM-guided attention and exogenous attention. Experiment 2 replaced the exogenous cue with an endogenous cue and demonstrated that endogenous attention had no impact on WM-guided attention. These findings indicate that WM-guided attention shares mechanisms with exogenous attention to some extent while operating in parallel with endogenous attention.

The modulation of expectation violation on attention: Evidence from the spatial cueing effects.

The study sought to investigate whether and how expectation violation can modulate attention using the exogenous spatial cueing paradigm, under the theoretical framework of the Memory Encoding Cost (MEC) model. The MEC proposes that exogenous spatial cueing effects are mainly driven by a combination of two distinct mechanisms: attentional facilitation triggered by the presence of an abrupt cue, and attentional suppression induced by memory encoding of the cue. In current experiments, participants needed to identify a target letter that was sometimes preceded by a peripheral onset cue. Various types of expectation violation were introduced by regulating the probability of cue presentation (Experiments 1 & 5), the probability of cue location (Experiments 2 & 4), and the probability of irrelevant sound presentation (Experiment 3). The results showed that expectation violation could enhance the cueing effect (valid vs. invalid cue) in some cases. More crucially, all experiments consistently observed asymmetrical modulation of expectation violation on the cost (invalid vs. neutral cue) and benefit (valid vs. neutral cue) effects: Expectation violation increased the cost effects while did not modulate or decreased (or even reversed) the benefit effects. Furthermore, Experiment 5 provided direct evidence that violation of expectations could enhance the memory encoding of a cue (e.g., color) and this memory advantage could manifest quickly in the early stages of the experiment. The MEC better explains these findings than some traditional models like the spotlight: Expectation violation can both enhance the attentional facilitation of the cue and memory encoding of irrelevant cue information. These findings suggest that expectation violation has a general adaptive function in modulating the attention selectivity.