Task-dependent transfer of perceptual to memory representations during delayed spatial frequency discrimination

Discrimination thresholds were obtained during a delayed spatial frequency discrimination task. In Experiment 1, we found that presentation of a mask 3 s before onset of a reference Gabor patch caused selective interference in a subsequent discrimination task. However, a 10 s interval abolished this masking effect. In Experiment 2, the mask was associated with a second spatial frequency discrimination task so that a representation of the mask had to be coded into short-term perceptual memory. The presence of this second discrimination task now caused similar interference effects on the primary discrimination task at both the 3 s and 10 s ISI conditions. The different results from these two experiments are best explained by a two-step perceptual memory mechanism. The results also provide further insight into the conditions under which stimulus representations are shared between the perceptual and memory domains