Cognitive Control of Attentional Guidance by Visual and Verbal Working Memory Representations

Both visual and verbal information in working memory guide visual attention toward a memory-matching object. We tested whether: (a) visual and verbal representations have different effects on the deployment of attention; and (b) both types of representations can be used equally in a top-down manner. We asked participants to maintain a visual cue or a verbal cue at the beginning of each trial, and ended with a memory task to ensure that each cue was represented actively in working memory. Before the memory task, a visual search task appeared where validity was manipulated as valid, neutral, or invalid. We also manipulated the probability of valid trials (20%, 50%, and 80%), which had been told to the participants prior to the task. Consistent with earlier findings, attentional guidance by visual representations was modulated by the probability. We also found that this was true for verbal representations, and that these effects did not differ between representation types. These results suggest that both visual and verbal representations in working memory can be used strategically to control attentional guidance.