Memory under pressure: Secondary-task effects on contextual cueing of visual search
Abstract Repeated display configurations improve visual search. Recently, the question has arisen whether this contextual cueing effect (Chun & Jiang, 1998 ) is itself mediated by attention, both in terms of selectivity and processing resources deployed. While it is accepted that selective attention modulates contextual cueing (Jiang & Leung, 2005 ), there is an ongoing debate whether the cueing effect is affected by a secondary working memory (WM) task, specifically at which stage WM influences the cueing effect: the acquisition of configural associations (e.g., Travis, Mattingley, & Dux, 2013 ) versus the expression of learned associations (e.g., Manginelli, Langer, Klose, & Pollmann, 2013 ). The present study re-investigated this issue. Observers performed a visual search in combination with a spatial WM task. The latter was applied on either early or late search trials—so as to examine whether WM load hampers the acquisition of or retrieval from contextual memo