Configural representations in spatial working memory: modulation by perceptual segregation and voluntary attention

In what form are multiple spatial locations represented in working memory? The present study revealed that people often maintain the configural properties (interitem relationships) of visuospatial stimuli even when this information is explicitly task-irrelevant. However, the results also indicated that the voluntary allocation of selective attention prior to stimulus presentation, as well as feature-based perceptual segregation of relevant from irrelevant stimuli, can eliminate the influence of stimulus configuration on location-change detection performance. In contrast, voluntary attention cued to the relevant target location following presentation of the stimulus array failed to attenuate these influences. Thus, whereas voluntary selective attention can isolate or prevent the encoding of irrelevant stimulus locations and configural properties, people, perhaps due to limitations in attentional resources, reliably fail to isolate or suppress configural representations that have been encoded into working memory.