RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Visual Salience Affects Performance in a Working Memory Task
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 8016
OP 8021
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5503-08.2009
VO 29
IS 25
A1 Michael S. Fine
A1 Brandon S. Minnery
YR 2009
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/29/25/8016.abstract
AB Many studies of bottom-up visual attention have focused on identifying which features of a visual stimulus render it salient—i.e., make it “pop out” from its background—and on characterizing the extent to which salience predicts eye movements under certain task conditions. However, few studies have examined the relationship between salience and other cognitive functions, such as memory. We examined the impact of visual salience in an object–place working memory task, in which participants memorized the position of 3–5 distinct objects (icons) on a two-dimensional map. We found that their ability to recall an object's spatial location was positively correlated with the object's salience, as quantified using a previously published computational model (Itti et al., 1998). Moreover, the strength of this relationship increased with increasing task difficulty. The correlation between salience and error could not be explained by a biasing of overt attention in favor of more salient icons during memorization, since eye-tracking data revealed no relationship between an icon's salience and fixation time. Our findings show that the influence of bottom-up attention extends beyond oculomotor behavior to include the encoding of information into memory.