title: Inability to suppress salient distractors predicts low visual working memory capacity.
abstract: According to contemporary accounts of visual working memory (vWM), the ability to efficiently filter relevant from irrelevant information contributes to an individual's overall vWM capacity. Although there is mounting evidence for this hypothesis, very little is known about the precise filtering mechanism responsible for controlling access to vWM and for differentiating low- and high-capacity individuals. Theoretically, the inefficient filtering observed in low-capacity individuals might be specifically linked to problems enhancing relevant items, suppressing irrelevant items, or both. To find out, we recorded neurophysiological activity associated with attentional selection and active suppression during a competitive visual search task. We show that high-capacity individuals actively suppress salient distractors, whereas low-capacity individuals are unable to suppress salient distractors in time to prevent those items from capturing attention. These results demonstrate that individual differences in vWM capacity are associated with the timing of a specific attentional control operation that suppresses processing of salient but irrelevant visual objects and restricts their access to higher stages of visual processing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada; jmg2@sfu.ca jmcd@sfu.ca.
authors.forename: John M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Gaspar
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada;
authors.forename: Gregory J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Christie
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Douglas College, New Westminster, British Columbia, V3M 5Z5, Canada;
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Prime
authors.affiliation: Centre de Recherche en Neuropsychologie et Cognition, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 3J7, Canada.
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jolicœur
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada; jmg2@sfu.ca jmcd@sfu.ca.
authors.forename: John J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: McDonald
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008959:Models, Neurological; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011930:Reaction Time; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: attention; distractor positivity; event-related potentials; suppression; working memory