The Influence Of Visual Working Memory Load On Selective Attention

Attentional selection,as a core ability of human cognitive system,enables cognitive system to focus on task-relevant information while ignoring irrelevant distractors.Load theory suggests that the locus of attentional selection is moderated by the load type and load level of concurrent task.High-perceptual load reduces the distractor processing,while high working memory load increases it.However,working memory is not a unitary buffer,but contains multiple sub-components,such as central executive,visuo-spatial sketchpad,phonological loop and episodic buffer.The previous studies focused on the effect of load of central executive and phonological loop on attention selection.The influence of visual working memory(VWM)load on attentional selection remains unclear.Currently there are three contradictory views,including load theory hypothesis,accuracy hypothesis and domain-specific control hypothesis.The present study focused on the influence of VWM load on attentional selection.The present study adopted a dual-task paradigm,by interpolating a perceptual task that reflects attentional selection into the VWM maintenance phase.Based on previous studies,we examined the influence of VWM load on attentional selection from two perspectives in 16 experiments: The influence of VWM load on distractor processing in a Flanker task,and the influence of VWM load on visual detection.If VWM load moderates attentional selection,then the VWM load will modulate the two perceptual tasks in a similar way.However,considering that the attention mechanisms underlying the two perceptual tasks are different,and there is not only information maintained in VWM,but also certain residual perceptual information processed at the fragile VWM,the moderation effects of VWM load on the two different tasks may be distinct.In study 1,we examined the influence of VWM load on distractor processing.There were 11 experiments,with a Flanker task being added into the maintenance phase of a VWM task.We first investigated the influences of memory task settings in previous studies on distractor processing(Experiments 1-4),and then ruled out two alternative explanations(Experiments 5 and 6).Then we tested the domain-specific control hypothesis in Experiments 7-9.Since in Experiments 1 to 9 there was no moderation of VWM load on distractor processing,we further examined the influence of spatial VWM load(Experiment 10)and precision VWM load(Experiment 11)on distractor processing.In Study 2,we examined the influence of VWM load on visual detection.There were 5 experiments,with a visual detection task being interpolated into the maintenance phase of a VWM task.We first examined the influence of VWM load on detection of low-priority detection target(Experiment 12)to determine whether there was a moderation effect.We then explored whether the result of Experiment 12 was due to the information stored in VWM or the residual perceptual information that appeared incidentally after the processing of visual memory items(Experiments 13-16).We reached the following main conclusions from the study:(1)VWM load does not moderate the distractor processing.(2)VWM task moderates visual detection via the residual perceptual information after the processing of visual memory arrays.(3)VWM load itself does not modulate selective attention under the circumstance of Flanker task or visual detection.