Mnemonic Attention in Analogy to Perceptual Attention: Harmony but Not Uniformity

It is widely accepted that peripheral cues in perception capture attention automatically, while central cues need voluntary control to exert functions. However, whether they differ similarly in working memory remains unclear. The present study addressed this issue through 5 experiments using a retro-cue paradigm with more than two hundred participants. Similar to perceptual attention, we found peripheral cues in working memory (1) were more effective than central cues in low memory-load conditions (Experiments 1 and 2), and (2) they influenced performance much faster than central cues (Experiment 5). Unlike perceptual attention, peripheral cues in working memory (1) did not capture attention to memory representations when they are uninformative (Experiment 3), and (2) could raise confidence ratings (Experiment 4). Taken together, our findings suggest that the effects of spatial cues on memory versus perception are similar but not the same.