title: Individual differences in recovery time from attentional capture.
abstract: Working memory capacity reflects a core ability of the individual that affects performance on many cognitive tasks. Recent work has suggested that an important covariate of memory capacity is attentional control, and specifically that low-capacity individuals are more susceptible to attentional capture by distractors than high-capacity individuals are, with the latter being able to resist capture. Here, we tested an alternative account according to which all individuals are equally susceptible to attentional capture, but high-capacity individuals recover more quickly than low-capacity individuals. Using psychophysical and electrophysiological methods, we measured recovery time from attentional capture. In two experiments, we found that high- and low-capacity individuals showed equivalent attentional capture effects in the initial moments following capture, but that low-capacity individuals took much longer to recover than high-capacity individuals did. These results suggest that the poor attentional control associated with low capacity is due to slow disengagement from distractors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1227, USA.
authors.forename: Keisuke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fukuda
authors.forename: Edward K
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Vogel
mesh_terms: D001076:Aptitude / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D012153:Retention, Psychology / Q000502:physiology