The Influence Of Working Memory Contents On Spatial Inhibition Of Return

It is a important way that we get information from the visual, but there are usually more than limited capacity visual system could process at any moment. Inhibition of return which is advantageous in adapting to new stimulate for people is a special phenomenon of attention. Working memory involved in inhibition of return have been approved, meanwhile working memory affected inhibition of return. How does working memory affect inhibition of return? The biased competition model suggests that the top-down feedback from the target template which held in working memory will bias attention in favor of the matching objects. Our research focused on the content-based current contents of working memory can capture attention to influent inhibition of return.A total of four experiments were reported exploring contents of working memory encoded by visually and verbally in spatial and object form influence spatial inhibition of return. Experiment 1 and 2 explored working memory encoded by visually in spatial and object form influence spatial inhibition of return, the results showed that spatial working memory influenced spatial inhibition of return which did not occur, object working memory did not influence object inhibition of return, and working memory encoded by visually will bias attention in favor of the matching objects. Experiment 3 and 4 explored working memory encoded by verbally in spatial and object form influence spatial inhibition of return, the results shows that spatial working influenced spatial inhibition of return, object working memory did not influence spatial inhibition of return, but working memory encoded by object did not bias attention in favor of the matching objects. To suppose that to bias attention verbal working memory must shift to visual form, and it happened during the cognition stages.The present research makes contributions for our understanding of the relationship between working memory and inhibition of return. First, most of previous studies focused on whether working memory influence inhibition of return, but we explored the relationship stay on the contents of working memory side. Second, our research extends previous studies by more demonstrating that guidance of attention can be based on different types of matching between working memory contents and inhibition of return. Finally, we have new findings, the representation of working memory did not change the relationship between working memory and inhibition of return, the contents of spatial working memory influence inhibition of return, while the contents of object working memory did not influence inhibition of return.