Stimuli that have led to a positive outcome (a reward) in previous encounters draw attention resulting in enhanced processing. This has been shown to generalize to new contexts in which no reward is given in both perception and working memory (WM). However, these experiments usually consider only one modality at a time. This unimodal approach does not do justice to the sensory complexity of natural environments. Pooresmaeli et al. (2014) addressed this gap by demonstrating a cross-modal value-driven enhancement of visual processing by the presentation of reward salient auditory stimuli.

This MEG study investigates cross-modal value-driven effects in WM. Participants performed interleaved blocks of two tasks: In a sounds localization task, participants learned to associate two sounds with a high and low reward, respectively. In a WM task, they compared a memorized orientation to the orientation of a probe stimulus. Critically, the sounds, albeit task-irrelevant, were concurrently presented during encoding or maintenance, allowing us to assess which WM subprocess might be susceptible to value-driven interference.

Contrary to our hypothesis, we observed lower accuracy when high compared to low reward salient sounds were presented during encoding. There was no value driven effect of sounds presented during memory maintenance. Thus, WM encoding seems to be more susceptible to cross-modal value-driven interference than maintenance. Ongoing MEG analyses will give further insights on cross-modal value-driven effects on representational strength of WM content and attentional selection during encoding and maintenance.