Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022 Apr;29(2):415-429.
doi: 10.3758/s13423-021-01958-1. Epub 2021 Jun 15.

Gotcha: Working memory prioritization from automatic attentional biases

Susan M Ravizza  1 , Katelyn M Conn  2
Affiliations
Review

Gotcha: Working memory prioritization from automatic attentional biases

Susan M Ravizza et al. Psychon Bull Rev. 2022 Apr.

Abstract

Attention is an important resource for prioritizing information in working memory (WM), and it can be deployed both strategically and automatically. Most research investigating the relationship between WM and attention has focused on strategic efforts to deploy attentional resources toward remembering relevant information. However, such voluntary attentional control represents a mere subset of the attentional processes that select information to be encoded and maintained in WM (Theeuwes, Journal of Cognition, 1[1]: 29, 1-15, 2018). Here, we discuss three ways in which information becomes prioritized automatically in WM-physical salience, statistical learning, and reward learning. This review integrates findings from perception and working memory studies to propose a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between attention and working memory.

Keywords: Attention; Implicit learning; Memory; Working memory.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Allen, R. J., & Ueno, T. (2018). Multiple high-reward items can be prioritized in working memory but with greater vulnerability to interference. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 80(7), 1731–1743.
    1. Anderson, B. A. (2016). The attention habit: how reward learning shapes attentional selection. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1369(1), 24–39. - PubMed
    1. Anderson, B. A. (2018). Controlled information processing, automaticity, and the burden of proof. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(5), 1814–1823.
    1. Anderson, B. A. (2019). Neurobiology of value-driven attention. Current Opinion in Psychology, 29, 27–33. - PubMed
    1. Anderson, B. A., Faulkner, M. L., Rilee, J. J., Yantis, S., & Marvel, C. L. (2013). Attentional bias for nondrug reward is magnified in addiction. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 21(6), 499–506. - PubMed - PMC

LinkOut - more resources