Visual working memory and perception share their spatial but not attentional resolution

Visual working memory (VWM) representations have similar spatial resolution to visual perception (Tamber-Rosenau et al., Psychological Science, 2015). Moreover, VWM representations are affected by crowding, with lower accuracy for the spatial middle targets in a sequentially-presented VWM array than the flanking edge items, and they exhibit the radial-tangential anisotropy that is also found in visual crowding (Yörük et al., Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2020). An additional characteristic of visual crowding that has yet to be explored in VWM crowding is lower-upper visual field asymmetry: upper-field attentional resolution is coarser than lower-field resolution, yielding greater crowding in the upper field (He et al., Nature, 1996). The current study fills this gap by investigating whether VWM and perceptual representations share attentional resolution. Three oriented lines were presented in the upper or the lower visual fields, with one line post-cued as the target. In the VWM task, the lines were presented sequentially and followed by a delay before response, and in the perceptual task, the lines were presented simultaneously through response collection. In both tasks, responses were collected with a 3-alternative forced-choice. The perceptual task showed lower-upper visual field asymmetry with stronger crowding in the upper visual field: the responses were less accurate for the middle targets than for the inner and outer targets in the upper but not lower field. The VWM task revealed crowding (middle targets had the most errors), but there was no lower-upper asymmetry. These results suggest that while VWM and perceptual representations may share spatial resolution, they are subject to distinct attentional resolution limits.