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Working memory (WM) has a limited capacity; however, this limitation can be mitigated by selecting individual items from the set currently held in WM for prioritization. The selection mechanism underlying this prioritization ability is referred to as the focus of attention (FOA) in WM. Although impressive progress has been achieved in recent years, a fundamental question remains unclear: Do perception and WM share one FOA? In the current study, we investigated the hypothesis that only a perceptual task tapping object-based attention can divert the FOA in WM. We adopted a retro-cue WM paradigm and inserted a perceptual task after the offset of the cue. Critically, we manipulated the type of attention (object-based attention in Experiments 1-3, feature-based attention in Experiment 4, and spatial attention in Experiment 5) consumed by the perceptual task. We found that participants were able to prioritize a retro-cued representation in WM, and the retro-cue benefit on memory accuracy was intact regardless of the perceptual task. Critically, the retro-cue benefit on the response time of WM task was significantly reduced only after an object-based attention perceptual task (Experiments 1, 2, 3a, and 3b), while remaining constant after a feature-based attention (Experiment 4) or spatial attention (Experiment 5) perceptual task. These results suggest that WM and perception share an object-based FOA, and an object-based attention perceptual task can divert the FOA in WM. Meanwhile, the current study further confirms that sustained attention is not necessary for selective maintenance in WM. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Retaining social interactions in working memory (WM) for further social activities is vital for a successful social life. Researchers have noted a social chunking phenomenon in WM: WM involuntarily uses the social interaction cues embedded in the individual actions and chunks them as one unit. Our study is the first to examine whether the social chunking in WM is an automatic process, by asking whether social chunking of agent actions in WM is resource-demanding, a key hallmark of automaticity. We achieved this by probing whether retaining agent interactions in WM as a chunk required more attention than retaining actions without interaction. We employed a WM change-detection task with actions containing social interaction cues as memory stimuli, and required participants only memorizing individual actions. As domain-general attention and object-based attention are suggested playing a key role in retaining chunks in WM, a secondary task was inserted in the WM maintenance phase to consume these two types of attention. We reestablished the fact that the social chunking in WM required no voluntary control (Experiments 1 and 2). Critically, we demonstrated substantial evidence that social chunking in WM did not require extra domain-general attention (Experiment 1) or object-based attention (Experiment 2). These findings imply that the social chunking of agent actions in WM is not resource-demanding, supporting an automatic view of social chunking in WM.

Visual working memory (VWM) is responsible for the temporal retention and manipulation of visual information. It has been suggested that VWM employs an object-based encoding (OBE) manner to extract highly discriminable information from visual perception: Whenever one feature dimension of the objects is selected for entry into VWM, the other task-irrelevant highly discriminable dimension is also extracted into VWM involuntarily. However, the task-irrelevant feature in OBE studies might reflect a high capacity fragile VWM (FVWM) trace that stores maskable sensory representations. To directly compare the VWM storage hypothesis and the FVWM storage hypothesis, we used a unique characteristic of FVWM that the representations in FVWM could be erased by backward masks presented at the original locations of the memory array. We required participants to memorise the orientations of three coloured bars while ignoring their colours, and presented backward masks during the VWM maintenance interval. In four experiments, we consistently observed that the OBE occurs regardless of the presentation of the backward masks, except when even the task-relevant features in VWM were significantly interrupted by immediate backward masks, suggesting that the task-irrelevant features of objects are stored in VWM rather than in FVWM.