The "irrelevant-change distracting effect" refers to the effect of changes in irrelevant features on the performance of the target feature, which has frequently been used to study information processing in visual working memory (VWM). In the current study, we reported a novel interference effect in VWM: the topological-change interference effect (TCIE). In a series of six experiments, we examined the influence of topological and nontopological changes as irrelevant features on VWM using a color change detection paradigm. The results revealed that only topological changes, although task irrelevant, could produce a significant interference effect. In contrast, nontopological changes did not produce any evident interference effect. Moreover, the TCIE was a stable and lasting effect, regardless of changes in locations, reporting methods, particular stimulus figures, the other salient feature dimensions and delay interval times. Therefore, our results support the notion that topological invariance that defines perceptual objects plays an essential role in maintaining representations in VWM.

中文翻译：

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拓扑变化在视觉工作记忆中引起干扰效应。

“无关变化分散效应”是指无关特征的变化对目标特征表现的影响，常被用于研究视觉工作记忆（VWM）中的信息处理。在当前的研究中，我们报告了 VWM 中的一种新干扰效应：拓扑变化干扰效应 (TCIE)。在一系列六个实验中，我们使用颜色变化检测范式检查了作为不相关特征的拓扑和非拓扑变化对 VWM 的影响。结果表明，只有拓扑变化，尽管与任务无关，才能产生显着的干扰效应。相比之下，非拓扑变化没有产生任何明显的干扰效应。此外，无论地点、报告方法、特定的刺激数字、其他显着特征维度和延迟间隔时间。因此，我们的结果支持这样一种观点，即定义感知对象的拓扑不变性在维护 VWM 中的表示方面起着至关重要的作用。