The Influences Of Color Preference On Attentional Orientation In Visual Search

Recently, numerous researchers have demonstrated that there is a close relationship between working memory and selective attention. And these two cognitive processes not only activate several same brain areas in the processing, such as right frontal and parietal cortex, bilateral insula, but also show a high degree of consistency on the functional performance. And the maximum number of items to maintain at the same time are both about4. That working memory will affect individual’s attentional orientation has been supported by many studies. However, it is still controversial on the issue that whether the items that match with the working memory will automatically capture one’s attention. Some researchers believe that even if the content stored in working memory has nothing to do with current task, it will capture one’s attention automatically in the visual search. While other researchers argue that the content stored in working memory does not always lead to the effect of attentional capture, and it will play a role in a more flexible way. Individuals can employ strategies actively for search. When they know the search target will never be the working memory content, their attention will deviate from the item matching working memory to improve search efficiency; and when the search target may be related to the item matching working memory, their attention will bias the item. In other words, the content of working memory can be used as either a template of "attention selection" or a template of "attention rejection", depending on the relevance with the subsequent task.Many of these studies exploring the relationship between visual working memory and attentional guidance employed the classic "working memory-visual search" dual-task paradigm. Subjects were asked to keep an object or a color, then completing a visual search task, followed by a memory test. The researchers manipulated some variables, such as the probability about whether the items matching working memory would appear in the search task, the interval between tasks, salience of search target, difficulty of search task, then tested the influence of working memory on attentional orientation by analyzing the accuracies of memory and search tasks and reaction time of search, or EEG data. In these studies, color, as one of the most commonly used features, has not been studied thoroughly. It was unclear whether color itself could influence attentional guidance.Color preferences means the colors that people mentally like or prefer. We tend to choose our favorite colors and avoid dislike colors. Different person shows different preference degree for the same color. Color preferences are affected by age, gender, cultural background, character and color attributes. In addition, previous studies also found that neural activities associated with attention (theta, alpha and N2pc) were affected by the subjective preferences of the individual. In other words, once a preferred color appear in the visual field, it will capture one’s attention. People gradually formed color preferences from birth. Color preferences remains in long-term memory (LTM), and affects all aspects of life, such as shopping, Internet, interior decoration, diet and so on. Most of prior researchers have merely tested the order of color preferences of different things on the behavioral level, and few researchers concerned with the relationship between the color preferences of cognitive function. This study was designed to investigate whether individual color preferences stored in the working memory or long-term memory would influence one’s attentional orientation by using the "memory-search" dual-task paradigm.Experiment1was designed to explore the effect of color preferences stored in working memory on selective attention by a dual-task paradigm and a color preferences measurement. The participants were required to rank nine standard colored squares (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, cyan and white) according to their preferences with filling the corresponding numbers into the box below. The colors were sorted into three levels:the most preferred colors, the medium preferred colors and the least preferred colors. Then the subjects performed the formal test. The color that needed to be remembered might appear in the search array, but the item with this color would never be the target. The colors matching with working memory contents could be any one of the nine colors. The participants were asked to rank the nine colors again at the end of the experiment. The findings showed that attention was captured by the distractor matching working memory contents, even if the participants were informed in advance that it would never be the target. Moreover, These results also showed that this capture might be dramatically enhanced by the most preferred colors. These results suggested that working memory did guide one’s attention automatically and the color preferences based on working memory could influence the attention orientation.The goal of Experiment2was to investigate the influence of color preferences stored in long-term memory on selective attention. Experiment2applied almost the same method with Experiment1except the independent variables. The results showed that the participants’attention was captured by the items matching working memory. However, their selective attention was not affected by color preferences based on long-term memory. To incorporate the data of experiment1and experiment2, we drew a color preference curve showing the mean color preference order from all participants. Blue-green was their most preferred color while yellow was the least preferred one.The goal of Experiment3was to explore whether there was a correlation between one’s color preferences and attentional capture effect size. The measurement method of color preference in Exp.3was changed into paired comparison. The result indicated no obvious relationship existed between one’s color preferences and attentional capture effect size.