The impact of retro-cue validity on working memory representation: Evidence from electroencephalograms

Visual working memory (VWM) performance can be improved by retrospectively cueing an item. Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain the mechanisms behind retro-cueing and VWM. There is still no clear electroencephalogram evidence support that retro-cue effect under different validity conditions triggered mechanisms. Herein, we investigated whether modulated underlying in VWM using EEGs. The participants were required perform recognition task after with 80%-validity (the high-validity state) or 20%-validity low-validity state; slightly below chance level of 25%). Contralateral delay activity lateralized alpha power used assess storage spatial attention, respectively. Although could redirect attention both conditions, found maintained non-cued items condition, but dropped them out condition. Our results explained removal hypothesis, prioritization protection-during-retrieval hypothesis. This work suggests are not mutually exclusive, determined cue experimental parameters.