title: Working memory capacity accounts for the ability to switch between object-based and location-based allocation of visual attention.
abstract: Bleckley, Durso, Crutchfield, Engle, and Khanna (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 884-889, 2003) found that visual attention allocation differed between groups high or low in working memory capacity (WMC). High-span, but not low-span, subjects showed an invalid-cue cost during a letter localization task in which the letter appeared closer to fixation than the cue, but not when the letter appeared farther from fixation than the cue. This suggests that low-spans allocated attention as a spotlight, whereas high-spans allocated their attention to objects. In this study, we tested whether utilizing object-based visual attention is a resource-limited process that is difficult for low-span individuals. In the first experiment, we tested the uses of object versus location-based attention with high and low-span subjects, with half of the subjects completing a demanding secondary load task. Under load, high-spans were no longer able to use object-based visual attention. A second experiment supported the hypothesis that these differences in allocation were due to high-spans using object-based allocation, whereas low-spans used location-based allocation.
authors.affiliation: Civil Aerospace Medical Institute, Federal Aviation Administration, Oklahoma City, OK, USA.
authors.forename: M Kathryn
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Bleckley
authors.forename: Jeffrey L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Foster
authors.forename: Randall W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Engle
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult