The influence of irrelevant mental representations on selective processing of visuo-spatial information in working memory

视觉空间工作记忆能够主动维持相关信息，为进一步的认知操作和与传入信号的联系提供支持。然而，有限的工作记忆容量需要一种机制，允许存储的心理表征适应当前的行为目标。与知觉加工相比，这种适应过程与注意力集中在相关的心理表征上有关。这可以通过包括回溯线索(回溯线索)的实验设计来研究，该回溯线索指示先前存储器阵列的哪些刺激与进一步处理相关。建议将注意力集中在工作记忆内容上，以保护各自的心理表征不受进一步衰退和干扰信号的干扰。然而，这种保护机制是如何在增加无关心理表征衰退的情况下被激活的，目前还没有得到解决。通过一种新的实验设计和视觉空间工作记忆的脑电关联，提出的实验侧重于选择性追溯线索后无关心理表征的命运。这也需要研究无关心理表征的时间衰退，以及研究兴奋机制和抑制机制对视觉空间工作记忆内容适应的贡献。进一步的实验研究分散注意力的信号会在多大程度上干扰心理表征的选择性保持，以及这种影响可能如何受到可用的工作记忆资源的影响。

Visuo-spatial working memory enables the active maintenance of relevant information for further cognitive operations and the association with incoming signals. However, the limited working memory capacity requires a mechanism that allows the adaptation of stored mental representations to current behavioral goals. Comparable to perceptual processing, this adaption process is associated with the focusing of attention on relevant mental representations. This can be studied by means of experimental designs including a retroactive cue (retro cue) that indicates which stimuli of a previous memory array are relevant for further processing. The focusing of attention on working memory contents was suggested to protect the respective mental representations from further decay and from interference by distracting signals. However, it is not yet resolved how this protective mechanism is activated at the expense of an increased decay of irrelevant mental representations. By means of a new experimental design and EEG correlates of visuo-spatial working memory, the proposed experiments focus on the fate of irrelevant mental representations following selective retro cues. This also entails studying the temporal decay of irrelevant mental representations and investigating the contribution of excitatory vs. inhibitory mechanisms to the adaptation of visuo-spatial working memory contents. A further experiment investigates to what extent distracting signals can interfere with the selective retention of mental representations and how such effects might be subject to available working memory resources.