Abstract
Although spatial cueing and feature cueing effects on perception have been intensively investigated, their effects on visual working memory (VWM) have remained relatively unexplored. Here we compared the spatial and feature cueing effects during VWM encoding and maintenance. Cueing effects on VWM processing and perceptual processing were also compared to achieve a more holistic understanding of the relationship between attention, perception and VWM. Our data indicate that feature cues are more effective during VWM encoding than during maintenance. Another important finding was that the effect of feature pre-cues on VWM performance was greater than that of spatial pre-cues. Moreover, this strong feature pre-cue effect appears to be specific to memory tasks. These results indicate that feature information might have a special role in guiding the allocation of VWM resources during the memory encoding processes. The present findings have important implications for the nature of both visual attention and VWM.
