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The Pink Of A Blue Flamingo: Effects Of Prototypical Object-Colour Representations On Visual Working Memory

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Rita Bertani¹ (), Vivien Chopurian¹, Thomas Christophel¹, Alessandra Souza²; ¹Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin; Bernstein Centre for Computational Neuroscience Berlin and Berlin Centre for Advanced Neuroimaging, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of the Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany, ²Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto, Portugal

Visual working memory relies on both sensory and abstract representations. Previous research has shown that visual working memory can be influenced by perceptually presented distractors. Here, we demonstrate that colour working memory can be subject to abstract interference without distracting visual input, and that this distraction effect depends on the similarity between memoranda and abstract distractor. In each trial of the experiment, we asked participants to memorize and recall the colour of two stimuli. Twelve stimuli were drawn from a pool of previously studied objects that have a strong association with one colour (e.g., flamingo with pink). We confirmed the prototypical colours in a pilot experiment and selected four non-prototypical sample stimuli that were either near to (+/- 60°, e.g. blue flamingo) or far from (+/- 120°, e.g. green flamingo) the prototypical colour of the objects. Prototypical object-colours were never shown, but their internalized representation (e.g., flamingos as pink) served as distractor for the to-be-memorized stimulus (e.g., green flamingo). We found that these purely internal distractors had an effect on the recalled colour that depended on distance to the prototypical colour. Participants recalled near colours (+/- 60°) as more similar to the prototypical colour (attraction bias), while far colours (+/- 120°) were recalled as further away (repulsion bias). A blue flamingo was thus reported as more purple, while a green flamingo was reported as more yellow. These results suggest that visual working memory is affected by abstract representations of prototypical object-colour pairs that were never shown.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Working memory