In search of the focus of attention in working memory: 13 years of the retro-cue effect

By Alessandra S. Souza, Klaus Oberauer. 2016

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Causal Evidence for a Role of Theta and Alpha Oscillations in the Control of Working Memory (2020, background): “00) relative to non-informative neutral-cues which indicated that either array could be tested by the probe, consistent with previous findings [26].”
Theta-Phase Connectivity between Medial Prefrontal and Posterior Areas Underlies Novel Instructions Implementation (2022, methodology): “After the presentation of the mappings, a fixation interval of 750 ms was presented, considered sufficiently long to prevent iconic memory traces (Souza and Oberauer, 2016), followed by a retro-cue presented centrally for 250 ms.”
Human Beta Oscillations Reflect Magnitude and Fidelity of Priority Shifts in Working Memory (2026, unknown): “Focusing attention on individual items in WM permits e ﬀ ective use of this limited capacity, allowing us to remember more quickly and accurately (Gri ﬃ n and Nobre, 2003; Souza and Oberauer, 2016; Van Ede and Nobre, 2023).”
Non-Target Suppression Supports the Formation of Representational Prioritization Under High Working Memory Load (2025, unknown): “This suggests that in resource-limited contexts, the brain adopts an energy-saving “fast initiation–rapid withdrawal” strategy, whereas in the absence of clear guidance (i.e., neutral cue), sustained theta is needed to maintain the activation of multiple memory representations [6,17,20].”
EEG Correlates of Cognitive Dynamics in Task Resumption After Interruptions: The Impact of Available Time and Flexibility (2024, unknown): “Such an experimental design would see participants store task-relevant information in working memory before directing attention to a specific subset of information with the presentation of informative cues (Griffin and Nobre 2003; Schneider et al. 2017; Souza and Oberauer 2016).”
Neural signatures of competition between voluntary and involuntary influences over the focus of attention in visual working memory (2023, background): “During the working-memory delay, the central fixation cross flashed briefly in one of the two colors serving as a retrocue (van Ede & Nobre, 2023; Souza & Oberauer, 2016; Griffin & Nobre, 2003).”
Changes in behavioral priority influence the accessibility of working memory content (2023, methodology): “Conversely, other mechanisms (e.g., protection from time-based decay, prioritization for comparison or recall, or attentional refreshing; Souza & Oberauer, 2016) may be responsible for retrocue benefits at smaller memory loads.”
Changes in behavioral priority influence the accessibility but not the quality of working memory content (2022, methodology): “Postcues vs. Retrocues Following earlier work (e.g., Souza & Oberauer, 2016) we use the term postcue to describe circumstances where the timing of an informative cue could allow an observer to consult an iconic representation of to-be-remembered information and the term retrocue to describe…”
Reorienting Spatial Attention within Visual Working Memory (2019, background): “VWM representations, however, are flexible (Van den Berg, Awh, & Ma, 2014) and could be influenced by retro-cues (Griffin & Nobre, 2003; Souza & Oberauer, 2016), indicating interactions between attention and VWM.”