Individual Differences Of Working Memory Capacity In Recovery Time From Attentional Capture

Working memory (WM) is a capacity-limited cognitive resource that represents a small amount of information in an on-line state. The most important characteristic of working memory is capacity limitation, this span limitation, namely working memory capacity (WMC). Working memory capacity is highly limited, generally limited to an average of about three to four simple objects. Working memory capacity reflects a core ability of the individual that affects performance on many cognitive tasks.Attention depends on two primary modes that compete for control over what information from the environment will be selectively enhanced or ignored. Attention can be shifted voluntarily to locations or objects to satisfy the individual’s goals, and this is thought to be driven by "top-down" signals in prefrontal cortex that bias processing in posterior cortical areas. In contrast, attention can be involuntarily captured by stimuli possessing highly salient properties, despite being irrelevant to the individual’s current goals, and this is thought to depend on "bottom-up" signals. Although involuntary attentional capture is an ecologically critical mechanism for detecting potentially important stimuli in the environment, Indeed, many cognitive tasks require the ability to ignore signals from salient but irrelevant stimuli so that we may restrict attention to stimuli that are related to our goals. Thus, how effective an individual is at overriding attentional capture may be a critical factor in that individual’s ability to achieve task-related goals.Humans need to change many ability when cognitive tasks, these changes are an important source of individual working memory capacity. Recent work has suggested that an important covariate of memory capacity is attentional control, Vogel has proposed in2008, the individual differences between working memory capacity as cognitive theory research of access point. And working memory capacity executive theory has proposed, due to the importance of working memory capacity to generally attentional ability, the test of the working memory capacity can predict the higher cognitive ability. Recent studies have shown that attentional ability and working memory capacity is covariant:high-capacity individuals show greater advantage in attentional search than low-capacity, and specifically that low-capacity individuals are more susceptible to attentional capture by distracters. Relative to the low-capacity individuals, high-capacity individuals recover more quickly than low-capacity individuals.Experiment1based on "memory-search" dual task paradigm, preliminary explore the differences of recovery time from attentional capture caused by working memory matched project between high-capacity and low-capacity individuals. The text of working memory capacity used a change-detection task with arrays of4,6, and8colored squares, each individual’s accuracy for each array size was transformed into a K estimate following a standard formula (Cowan,2001), and these three values were then averaged into a single WM capacity estimate, and take27%of the participants into analysis. The delay-time of experiment1are0ms、150ms and300ms, and the matching relationship are invalid and neutral, thus to explore whether high-capacity and low-capacity individuals could recover from attentional capture caused by working memory matched project under300ms delay-time. It is found that the individuals of high-capacity and low-capacity are automatically captured from attention under300ms delay-time, and couldn’t recover from attentional capture.Experiment2further explore the differences of recovery time from attentional capture caused by working memory matched project between high-capacity and low-capacity individuals under longer delay-time, and set the delay-time as300ms and600ms. It is found that the low-capacity individuals showed automatically captured from attention under300ms and600ms delay-time, and couldn’t recover from attentional capture; high-capacity individuals also showed automatically captured from attention under300ms delay-time, however, in600ms delay-time, high-capacity individuals couldn’t use strategic suppresstion and recover from attentional capture.Experiment3used ERPs of P1/Nleffect, set the delay-time150ms、300ms and600ms,thus further explore the differences of recovery time from attentional capture caused by working memory matched project between high-capacity and low-capacity individuals from the electrophysiological index. It is found whether it’s behavior results or EEG results, that the individuals of high-capacity and low-capacity couldn’t recover from attentional capture under150ms、300ms and600ms delay-time, and No obvious effect of P1/N1.This study showed that the recovery time of high-capacity and low-capacity individuals from attentional capture caused by working memory matched project exist differences, under600ms delay-time, both high-capacity and low-capacity couldn’t recover from attentional capture, however, in600ms delay-time, high-capacity individuals couldn’t use strategic suppresstion and recover from attentional capture.This is further evidence that the visual working memory influence on selective attention is controlled by working memory capacity. When the delay-time is long enough, high-capacity individuals due to its excellent control ability, could prioritize cognitive control, so that they can recover from attentional capture, and the top-down influence cognitive control has been completed. Low-capacity individuals still couldn’t complete the process of cognitive control,still show the effect due to the characteristics of project priority processing.