The Guidance Effect Of Working Memory Contents On Selective Attention

Top-down mechanism of selective attention was traditionally regarded as the result of target template. But some recent studies demonstrated that working memory contents also guided selective attention in top-down manner. However, they ignored the guidance effect of target template on selective attention.In this study, target template and working memory contents were investigated equally. By separating the guidance effect of target template from working memory contents, the guidance effect of working memory contents on attention, and the relationship between the guidance effect of working memory and that of target template, were reconsidered.Two experiments were carried out. In Experiment One, items matching working memory contents and target template were presented respectively, in order to compare the guidance effect of target template with that of working memory contents indirectly. In Experiment Two, items matching working memory contents and target template were presented together, and they were made to compete for attentional resource in order to compare the guidance effect of target template with that of working memory contents directly.Some major results were obtained. Firstly, the top-down effect of working memory on selective attention was notably weakened when combining target template with working memory contents. Secondly, even in dual tasks paradigm, target template also had significant guidance effect on selective attention. Thirdly, when target template and working memory content were presented together, target template had competitive advantage over working memory contents, target template play a more important role in selective attention.It was concluded that the guidance effect of working memory contents in previous researches contained effect of target template. The role of working memory contents in selective attention was notably weakened when separating the guidance effect of target template from it, which means previous researchers overrated the guidance effect of working memory contents on selective attention.