Abstract：
Selectively maintaining information is an essential function of visual working memory (VWM). Recent VWM studies have mainly focused on selective maintenance of objects, leaving the mechanisms of selectively maintaining an object\'s feature in VWM unknown. Based on the interactive model of perception and VWM, we hypothesized that there are distinct selective maintenance mechanisms for objects containing fine-grained features versus objects containing highly discriminable features. To test this hypothesis, we first required participants to memorize a dual-feature object (colored simple shapes vs. colored polygons), and informed them about the target feature via a retro-cue. Then a visual search task was added to examine the fate of the irrelevant feature. The selective maintenance of an object\'s feature predicted that the irrelevant feature should be removed from the active state of VWM and should not capture attention when presented as a distractor in the visual search task. We found that irrelevant simple shapes impaired performance in the visual search task (Experiment 1). However, irrelevant polygons did not affect visual search performance (Experiment 2), and this could not be explained by decay of polygons (Experiment 3) or by polygons not capturing attention (Experiment 4). These findings suggest that VWM adopts dissociable mechanisms to selectively maintain an object\'s feature, depending on the feature\'s perceptual characteristics.
摘要：
选择性地维护信息是视觉工作记忆（VWM）的基本功能。最近的VWM研究主要集中在对象的选择性维护，留下在VWM中选择性维护对象功能的机制未知。基于感知和VWM的交互模型，我们假设，对于包含细粒度特征的对象与包含高度可区分特征的对象，存在不同的选择性维护机制。为了检验这个假设，我们首先要求参与者记住一个双特征对象(彩色简单形状与彩色多边形)，并通过后提示告知他们目标特征。然后添加了视觉搜索任务以检查无关特征的命运。对象特征的选择性维护预测,当在视觉搜索任务中作为干扰者呈现时,应该从VWM的活动状态中移除无关特征,并且不应该引起注意。我们发现不相关的简单形状会损害视觉搜索任务中的性能（实验1）。然而,不相关的多边形不会影响视觉搜索性能(实验2)，这不能通过多边形的衰减（实验3）或未引起注意的多边形（实验4）来解释。这些发现表明，VWM采用可分离的机制来选择性地保持对象的特征，取决于特征的感知特征。
