Visual Working Memory Content Influences Correspondence Processes

Representing objects as continuous across time requires the establishment of correspondence, whereby current stimuli are represented as deriving from the same object as earlier stimuli. Spatiotemporal continuity and surface-feature similarity play important roles in these correspondence processes. Because objects are often represented across extended periods of time, visual working memory (VWM) content should also play a role in object correspondence. We tested this prediction using Ternus motion. Displays consisted of three-disk arrays that shifted horizontally by one position between frames. Depending on how correspondence is resolved, Ternus displays are perceived as group motion, where all three disks appear to move together, or element motion, where one disk appears to jump across the others. Reports of which motion is perceived provide an index of how correspondence was resolved. Ternus displays were adapted such that the color of some disks biased element motion while the color of others biased group motion. Maintaining one or the other of the colors in VWM for later report systematically biased which type of motion was perceived (Experiments 1 and 2). When color was incidental to the VWM task. however, it did not (Experiment 3). These results confirm that VWM content contributes to object correspondence.