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A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions
Published on: July 16, 2015
Selective working memory disables inhibition of visual features
Christina Lucas1, Johan Lauwereyns
1Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Experimental Psychology
|October 24, 2007
Summary
Information in working memory can hinder attention when the same visual features are prioritized. This study shows selection mechanisms, not resource limits, cause visual interference.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Working memory (WM) can enhance attentional processing.
- The disruptive effects of WM on attention are less understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate conditions under which working memory information disrupts subsequent attentional processing.
- To explore the role of feature selection in WM-attention interactions.
Main Methods:
- A dual-task paradigm involving visual discrimination and an online attention task.
- Three working memory conditions: Same (matching feature dimensions), Switch (mismatched dimensions), and Unknown.
- Seventy participants judged colors or shapes while maintaining specific visual features in WM.
Main Results:
- Visual interference was significantly higher in the Switch condition.
- Irrelevant visual features were harder to ignore when they belonged to a dimension prioritized in working memory.
- This suggests WM prioritization of one dimension interferes with attention to another.
Conclusions:
- Selective working memory prioritization can disrupt attention, particularly when dimensions mismatch.
- Neural overlap between WM and attention circuits likely underlies this interference.
- Selection mechanisms, not limited cognitive resources, are key determinants of visual interference.
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