Wanna He¹, Hui Chen¹, Mowei Shen¹; ¹Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University

Phenomenal causality is perceived solely from physical cues, reflecting the perceived necessity between two motions. It is perceived automatically and independently of higher-level reasoning. Some researchers suggest that phenomenal causality may function like a Gestalt cue, integrating two motions into a unified whole in a nature way, but this hypothesis has not been empirically tested. Prior work showing that Gestalt-based perceptual integration carries over into visual working memory (VWM) representation provides a basis for examining whether phenomenal causality yields a similar integrative effect. Across three experiments, we investigated whether phenomenal causality shapes how VWM interacts with attention. Experiment 1 used a classical VWM-guided attention paradigm and manipulated causality through time interval. Participants memorized two disc colors and their causal relation before completing a visual search and a memory tasks. VWM-guided attention emerged only in the causality condition. Experiment 2 replicated this results by manipulating motion-path, again demonstrating that causally linked motions were represented as a single event in VWM that guided attention, whereas non-causal motions were not. Experiment 3 tested whether such integration occurs automatically. Participants memorized only one disc’s color (i.e. target color) and completed a search task without intentionally encoding the discs’ relation. If integration were automatic, both colors would be encoded and guide attention in the causality condition. However, results revealed only the target color guided attention, indicating that VWM does not automatically encode the non-target color even when it is perceptually organized by causality. Together, these findings show that phenomenal causality can restructure how multiple motions are represented and used to guide attention, but only when explicitly encoded. This work highlight event structure as a critical determinant of how VWM shapes attentional selection offering new insight into how dynamic event structure shapes cognition.