Attention Guidance Effect Induced By Different Inhibitory Motivations

Attention is not only directed from bottom to top by the stimulus,but also directed by the memory representation from top to bottom.Even the unrelated memory representation can direct attention.Past researches have focused on the task attributes such as stimulus color,perceptual.and working memory load et al.As for the individual differences of memorydriven attentional capture found,they lacked interest in exploring.Participants who are divided into two groups according to their search speed in difficult search tasks are found to have two opposite attentional trends.The attention of participants who search faster are still driven by memory,whereas the attention of those who search slower are found inhibited by memory.It is only attributed to the timing of cognitive control as cognitive control takes time to evolve in past researches,neglecting the influence of individual differences.The process of memory-driven attentional capture is partially automatic and influenced by cognitive control.Perceptual and working memory load are thought to influence memorydriven attentional capture through the adjustment of cognitive resources.Thus,it should be noted that individual differences related to visio-spatial working memory and cognitive control could possibly affect memory-driven attentional capture.Field independent individuals are testified to be better in visio-spatial working memory and cognitive control ability.Thus,the key problem of this thesis is to investigate whether the field cognitive style will influence the memory-driven attentional capture.More specifically,this thesis will adopt the dual task paradigm which has been proved to find individual differences in memory driven attentional capture and the method of inducing inhibitory motivation of different level,aiming to explore the effect of field cognitive style on memory driven capture under different inhibitory attentional motivational level through three experiments.Experiment 1 aims to investigate whether the field cognitive style will influence memory-driven attentional capture when there is no inhibitory attentional motivation.This can be achieved by not setting the introduction that can induce inhibitory motivation.60 participants were ranked in terms of Group Embedded Figure Test(GEFT)results and divided into Field Independent(ranked the top 27%)or Field Dependent(ranked the lowest 27%)group.A total of 32 participants(16FI,16FD)were involved in a 2×2×2 mixed-design experiment.Difficulty(simple,difficult)and condition(invalid,neutral)were withinsubjects while cognitive style(field-independent,field-dependent)was between-subjects.The dependent variable were the accuracy of the memory and search task,the RT and the memory-driven effect(RT in invalid trials minus RT in neutral trials)of search task.Results indicated the accuracy of FI group were significantly higher than that of FD group in both memory and search task.The search RT of FI group was significantly lower than that of FD group in simple trials.The RT difference in difficult trials,however,revealed no significant difference.Moreover,the memory-driven attentional effect of FI group in all cases were larger than those of FI group,without reaching significance though.Experiment 2 aims to investigate the effect of field cognitive style on memory attentional capture when there is a moderate inhibitory attentional motivation induced by the introduction provided.Participant number and experimental process resembled experiment 1.Results still showed the accuracy of FI group was significantly higher than that of FD group in both memory and search task.Different to experiment 1,there was a significant interaction of condition and field cognitive style on search RT.Search RT in invalid trials was significantly greater than that in neutral trials for FI group.Conversely,for FD group,there was no significant difference between search RTs in invalid and neutral trials.The memory-driven attentional effect was significantly larger for FT group compared to FD group.This may result from the higher inner inhibitory motivational level induced in FD group as the dual tasks were more difficult for them because of their lower visio-spatial cognitive resources.Experiment 3 increased the ratio of invalid to neutral trials from 50%:50% to 75%:25% to enhance the inhibitory attentional motivation level.Through this operation,this experiment can investigate the modulatory effect of field cognitive style on memory attentional capture under a strong induction of inhibitory attentional motivation.52 participants were ranked in terms of GEFT results and divided into FI(ranked the top 27%)or FD(ranked the lowest 27%)group,resulting in 14 FIs and 14 FDs.Experimental process resembled experiment 1 and 2.Meantime,to avoid the data elimination in prior experiments,participants were encouraged to do experiment carefully by informing them“One will be given two extra RMB if the accuracy of memory and search tasks are both higher than 80%”.Results still showed the accuracy of FI group were higher than those of FD group in both memory and search tasks.Contrary to experiment 2,there was no significant difference on search RTs between neutral and invalid trials for FI group,while the opposite was true for FD group.The memory-driven attentional effect of FI group was marginally significant smaller than that of FD group.This suggested when the inhibitory attentional motivation was fully induced in FI,their memory-driven effect can be significantly reduced due to their stronger attentional inhibitory capacity.Conclusions:(1)No effect of field cognitive style on memory-driven attentional capture were found when no inhibitory attentional motivation was induced.(2)When a moderate inhibitory attentional motivation was tried to be induced through the experiment setting,the memory-driven attentional effect size of field independent participants was significantly larger than that of field dependent ones.(2)When a strong inhibitory attentional motivation was tried to be induced through the experiment setting,the memory-driven attentional effect size of field independent participants was significantly smaller than that of field dependent ones.In addition,the memory-driven attentional effect size of field independent participants in Experiment 2 was significantly dropped to a lower level in Experiment 3.This indicates the level of inner inhibitory attentional motivation of FDs and FIs,induced by same outer settings,maybe different.This will probably interacts with individual inhibitory ability,thus producing different sizes of memory-driven attentional capture.