Action Planning Mediates Guidance of Visual Attention from Working Memory

Figure 1

(a) shows the three color conditions used in the present study. The memory item was a centrally presented filled circle (left side) that had one out of thirty-six color hues. Participants had to remember the hue until the end of a trial. In the search task (right side), participants had to report the letter (“” or “”) embedded in the grey diamond-shaped target. Distractors had an embedded tilted hourglass. In the “color absent” condition all distractors were grey. In the “memorized color” condition, one of the distractors had a hue from the same color category as the memory item previously shown. In the “neutral color” condition, one of the distractors had a hue from another color category. (b) shows the movement cues. When a grasping hand was shown, participants had to plan a grasping movement (upper picture). When a pointing hand was shown, participants had to plan a pointing movement (lower picture). Execution of the movement had to be withheld until the end of the trial. (c) shows a trial procedure. Participants had to plan a movement (move cue) and remember a color hue (memory item) while performing a visual search task (search display). After search was completed, participants had to perform the planned movement towards the colored item they thought would match the original memory item.

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(b)

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