Exogenous and endogenous spatial attention effects on visuospatial working memory.
In this study, we investigate how exogenous and endogenous orienting of spatial attention affect visuospatial working memory (VSWM). Specifically, we focused on two attentional effects and their consequences on storage in VSWM, when exogenous (Experiment 1) or endogenous (Experiment 2) orienting cues were used. The first effect, known as the meridian effect, is given by a decrement in behavioural performance when spatial cues and targets are presented in locations separated by vertical and/or horizontal meridians. The second effect, known as the distance effect, is given by a decrement in the orienting effects as a function of the spatial distance between cues and targets. Our results revealed a dissociation between exogenous and endogenous orienting mechanisms in terms of both meridian and distance effects. We found that meridian crossing affects performance only when endogenous cues were used. Specifically, VSWM performance with endogenous cueing depended more on the number of meridian crossings than on distance between cue and target. By contrast, a U-shaped distance dependency was observed using exogenous cues. Our findings therefore suggest that exogenous and endogenous orienting mechanisms lead to different forms of attentional bias for storage in VSWM.
Botta
Fabiano
F
Department of Psychology, University Sapienza of Rome, Rome, Italy. fabianobottaster@gmail.com
Santangelo
Valerio
V
Raffone
Antonino
A
Lupiáñez
Juan
J
Belardinelli
Marta Olivetti
MO
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult