title: Working memory contents revive the neglected, but suppress the inhibited.
abstract: It is well known that attention is biased toward a stimulus matching working memory contents. However, it remains unknown whether the maintenance of information in working memory by itself is sufficient to create memory-driven attentional capture. Notably, in many previous studies showing the memory-driven attentional capture, the task settings might have explicitly or implicitly incentivized participants to strategically attend to a memory-matching stimulus. By innovating an experimental paradigm, the present study overcame this challenge and directly tested whether working memory contents capture attention in the absence of task-level attentional bias toward a memory-matching stimulus. I found that a stimulus that is usually outside the focus of attention, powerfully captured attention when it matched working memory contents, whereas a match between working memory and an inhibited stimulus suppressed attentional allocation toward the memory-matching stimulus. These findings suggest that in the absence of any task-level attentional bias toward memory-matching stimuli, attention is biased toward a memory-matching stimulus, but this memory-driven attentional capture is diminished when top-down inhibition is imposed on the stimulus.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, Chungbuk, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: suk.w.han@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Suk Won
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Han
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attention; Perception; Stimulus-driven competition; Working memory