The priority state of items in visual working memory determines their influence on early visual processing

Abstract

Items held in visual working memory (VWM) influence early visual processing by enhancing memory-matching visual input. Depending on current task demands, memory items can have different priority states. Here, we investigated how the priority state of items in VWM affects two key aspects of early visual processing: access to visual awareness and attention allocation. We used three perceptual tasks: the breaking continuous flash suppression task (Experiment 1), the attentional capture task (Experiment 2), and a visual search task (Experiment 3). We found that stimuli matching prioritized VWM items yielded a large perceptual advantage over stimuli matching non-prioritized VWM items (despite minimal memory loss). Additionally, stimuli matching non-prioritized memory items exhibited a (small but consistent) perceptual advantage over VWM-unrelated stimuli. Taken together, observers can flexibly de-prioritize and re-prioritize VWM contents based on current task demands, allowing observers to exert control over the extent to which VWM contents influence concurrent visual processing.