Effects Of Types Of Working Memory Representation On Attention Capture

Attention will bias the stimulus that matches the content of the working memory,but many researchers still have a lot of controversy about the problem of attentional capture based on working memory.There are many reasons.On the one hand,attention bias of the distractor's own attributes and the task-level are not completely excluded.On the other hand,it is also the focus of this study,the classification of working memory content is not clear,which leads to the inconsistency of the reference.Based on the literature review,this paper clarifies the types of working memory.The purpose of this approach is to directly examine and compare the effects of different types of working memory on attentional capture in the same competitive paradigm,so as to better reveal the mechanism of selective attention.Including two experiments,in experiment 1,we only asked the subjects to complete a visual search task,which proved that the high perceptual load condition of the distractor would not be paid attention.This provides the possibility for the next experiments.Experiment 2,three groups of subjects were asked to complete the task of perceptual,direct semantic and indirect semantic working memory.During the working memory retention,a visual search task was performed,in which the distractor was matched or non-matched with the working memory,and the difference of response time between the two conditions was the size of attention capture.The results showed that the indirect semantic representation of working memory can also capture attention automatically.However,this attention capture effect is significantly lessthan the condition ofperceptual representation,also direct semantic representation.Interestingly,there is no significant difference in the ability of perceptual representation and direct semantic representation to guide attention.The conclusion is as follows,even without any physical attributes or goal-oriented make the attentional bias distractor,but as long as it is matched with the working memory,it is enough to cause the attention capture.And the size of the attentional capture is regulated by the type of working memory representation.