Trends in Cognitive Sciences
ReviewDistraction in Visual Working Memory: Resistance is Not Futile
Section snippets
Resisting Distraction Makes Working Memory ‘Work’
The temporary storage, manipulation, and use of goal-relevant information is known as working memory [1]. For working memory to ‘work’, it must be robust to distraction from irrelevant perceptual input and any internal sources of interference. Due to an abundance of research on its limitations, it may be tempting to overlook the incredible resilience of working memory in the face of distraction. Distraction resistance is a key determinant of individual working memory capacity [2], which itself
Behavioral Consequences of Distraction
When, how, and to what degree distraction influences working memory are fundamental questions for understanding goal-directed behavior. Some of the earliest psychological studies of working memory focused on the behavioral consequences of distraction [14], and the finding that delay-period distraction can impair performance is so ubiquitous that it is considered a ‘benchmark’ that modern working memory models must include [15]. In fact, the obligatory encoding of distractors during maintenance
Mechanisms of Storage and Protection
The past decade of visual working memory research has produced evidence for a dizzying array of storage substrates and coding mechanisms. Here, we detail the empirical evidence for a few of these mechanisms and discuss how each may uniquely support distraction resistance. Given that much of this research has utilized paradigms without an explicit distraction component, we highlight potential opportunities for future research to more directly link the behavioral and neural consequences of
Control Processes for Distraction Resistance
There is considerable evidence that control processes directly limit the detrimental effects of perceptual distractors, in addition to supporting memory maintenance (see the ‘Sensory Recruitment’ section). Here, we outline evidence for control mechanisms that actively inhibit distractor processing and prevent unwanted information from being encoded into memory. We close with a brief discussion of the ways in which top-down control processes can flexibly shape storage processes in preparation
Concluding Remarks and Future Directions
Protecting goal-relevant information from distraction is critical for successful cognitive function. Indeed, the limited-capacity working memory system is remarkably robust; interference from perceptual input typically incurs only subtle degradation, and more rarely catastrophic loss. The neural mechanisms by which working memory resists disruption have been studied for over half a century, but methodological and analytical advances in cognitive neuroscience over the past decade have produced
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Anastasia Kiyonaga, Tommy Sprague, Ed Awh, Tehila Nugiel, and members of the LewPeaLab for helpful comments on early versions of this manuscript. This work was supported by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01EY028746 (J.A.L-P.). This content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Glossary
- Activity-silent storage
- working memory maintenance hypothesized to occur without continuous active firing, potentially via short-term synaptic plasticity that yields temporary item-specific changes in the configuration of a network of neurons.
- Attractive bias
- a systematic shift in a memory response toward the feature value of a distractor. For example, a green distractor would cause memory for the color yellow to be reported as greenish-yellow.
- Congruency effect
- memory disruption is more profound
References (146)
Working memory capacity and its relation to general intelligence
Trends Cogn. Sci.
(2003)A broken filter: prefrontal functional connectivity abnormalities in schizophrenia during working memory interference
Schizophr. Res.
(2012)The distributed nature of working memory
Trends Cogn. Sci.
(2017)Sustained activity encoding working memories: not fully distributed
Trends Neurosci.
(2017)Reevaluating the role of persistent neural activity in short-term memory
Trends Cogn. Sci.
(2020)Working memory 2.0
Neuron
(2018)Reevaluating the sensory account of visual working memory storage
Trends Cogn. Sci.
(2017)Reaffirming the sensory recruitment account of working memory
Trends Cogn. Sci.
(2018)Differential effects of distraction during working memory on delay-period activity in the prefrontal cortex and the visual association cortex
NeuroImage
(2006)Speed selectivity in visual short term memory for motion
Vis. Res.
(2007)
Stimulus-specific mechanisms of visual short-term memory
Vis. Res.
Flexible cognitive resources: competitive content maps for attention and memory
Trends Cogn. Sci.
Multiple spatial frequency channels in human visual perceptual memory
Vis. Res.
On the neural mechanisms underlying the protective function of retroactive cuing against perceptual interference: evidence by event-related potentials of the EEG
Biol. Psychol.
Two distinct mechanisms of selection in working memory: additive last-item and retro-cue benefits
Cognition
Cellular basis of working memory
Neuron
Complementary roles for primate frontal and parietal cortex in guarding working memory from distractor stimuli
Neuron
Revisiting the role of persistent neural activity during working memory
Trends Cogn. Sci.
Neural mechanisms of information storage in visual short-term memory
Vis. Res.
Laminar organization of working memory signals in human visual cortex
Curr. Biol.
Prioritizing information during working memory: beyond sustained internal attention
Trends Cogn. Sci.
Neural mechanisms of attending to items in working memory
Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev.
Restoring latent visual working memory representations in human cortex
Neuron
Gamma and beta bursts underlie working memory
Neuron
Working memory prioritization impacts neural recovery from distraction
Cortex
The many faces of working memory and short-term storage
Psychon. Bull. Rev.
Dissociating distractor-filtering at encoding and during maintenance
J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform.
Age-related changes in working memory and the ability to ignore distraction
PNAS
Working memory interference control deficit in children referred by teachers for ADHD symptoms
Child Neuropsychol.
The what, where and how of delay activity
Nat. Rev. Neurosci.
How visual working memory handles distraction: cognitive mechanisms and electrophysiological correlates
Vis. Cogn.
Some tests of the decay theory of immediate memory
Q. J. Exp. Psychol.
Benchmarks for models of short-term and working memory
Psychol. Bull.
Modeling working memory: an interference model of complex span
Psychon. Bull. Rev.
Revisit once more the sensory storage account of visual working memory
Vis. Cogn.
Visual working memory storage recruits sensory processing areas
Trends Cogn. Sci.
Working memory: looking back and looking forward
Nat. Rev. Neurosci.
What happens to an individual visual working memory representation when it is interrupted?
Br. J. Psychol.
The role of prefrontal cortex in resolving distractor interference
Cogn. Affect. Behav. Neurosci.
Working-memory-triggered dynamic adjustments in cognitive control
J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn.
Working memory in primate sensory systems
Nat. Rev. Neurosci.
Processing multiple visual objects is limited by overlap in neural channels
PNAS
Changing concepts of working memory
Nat. Neurosci.
The impact of interference on short-term memory for visual orientation
J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform.
Flexible coding of visual working memory representations during distraction
J. Neurosci.
Erasing and blurring memories: the differential impact of interference on separate aspects of forgetting
J. Exp. Psychol. Gen.
Distraction biases working memory for faces
Psychon. Bull. Rev.
The retention and disruption of color information in human short-term visual memory
J. Vis.
Orienting attention to locations in internal representations
J. Cogn. Neurosci.
Manipulating the focus of attention in working memory: evidence for a protection of multiple items against perceptual interference
Psychophysiology
Cited by (62)
Shifting attention between perception and working memory
2024, CognitionHarmonic memory signals in the human cerebral cortex induced by semantic relatedness of words
2024, npj Science of Learning