Stressing the mind: the effect of cognitive load and articulatory suppression on attentional guidance from working memory.
Four experiments explored the effect of cognitive load on the time course of top-down guidance of attention from working memory (WM). Observers had to search for a target presented among several distractors, with the target and distractor stimuli embedded inside different objects. On half of the trials, one of the distractor objects was cued by a matching item held in WM. When a single item was maintained in memory, search performance was impaired relative to a neutral baseline, where the memory and search displays did not match. These effects of WM on subsequent search were reduced by including a verbal suppression task during the WM and search displays, and by varying the WM load. The degree of competition for resources in WM is a key factor in determining the time course and magnitude of the interaction between WM and visual selection.
Soto
David
D
Division of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Imperial College London, London, England. d.soto@imperial.ac.uk
Humphreys
Glyn W
GW
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011930:Reaction Time; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D016526:Workload