Perceptual Load And Perceptual Highlighting Influence Attention Inhibition

In real life,when individuals are faced with complicated information,attention control plays a very important role in the process of individuals selectively processing useful information while inhibiting irrelevant information.It is also the focus of many researchers in the field of selective attention in working memory.target representations stored in working memory in advance play a top-down guiding role in visual attention,but recent studies have found that active inhibition of target-independent working memory representations(interfering stimuli)produces attention to avoid interference of target-independent working memory representations in visual search,and have obtained many valuable conclusions.however,previous studies still have shortcomings in the visual search process that affect non-target working memory representations.In particular,most of the previous studies independently explore the impact of a factor on the process.For example,recent studies of selective attention processes affecting perceptual load have found that the level of perceptual load regulates cognitive control processes in selective attention by influencing the allocation of attention resources.In addition,researchers’ studies of attention inhibition processes that characterize the salient effects of stimuli in working memory have found that highly salient stimuli are more likely to attract attention resources,leading to rapid capture and suppression during selective attention.In addition,the study of the attention capture effect on the influence of perceptual load found that the distance between the target and the interference term can also adjust the attention process by the amount of local "attention resources ".All of the above influencing factors are cognitive control in selective attention process through "attention resources ".However,there is no research on the attention inhibition process of working memory representation from the perspective of attention resources.in view of this,this study,based on previous studies,attempts to explore how different allocation of attention resources affects individual cognitive control processes and their internal mechanisms,and to further clarify the related processes of capture and suppression in selective attention processes.Using the "working memory-visual search dual-task" paradigm,this study examined the mechanism of how much attention resources affect attention inhibition during selective attention through two studies(3 experiments)with the help of erp techniques.Research 1 and 2 explore the effect of perceptual load and working memory representation on attention resources by manipulating the level of perceptual load and the visibility of working memory,and examine the cognitive control mechanism under different attention resources.the main findings are as follows:(1)When the target is close to the interference term(non-target working memory sign),the attention inhibition process is regulated by the perceptual load.when the perceptual load is low,there is excess attention resources overflowing to perform cognitive control functions,so for more prominent interference items,individuals are more likely to quickly suppress interference items and turn attention to other stimuli.the selective attention processes include early bottom-up attention capture of interference terms and late top-down attention inhibition.However,when the perceptual load is high,because of the difficulty of the task,the individual is involved in more attention resources,so there is no redundant attention resources overflow to help the attention suppression process.then its selective attention process does not involve early attention capture of the interference term and late attention inhibition.(2)When the object is far away from the interference term,because the interference term exists as a "highlight stimulus ",the task difficulty is reduced,so the cognitive control process of the individual is more likely to be triggered and stronger than that of the the interference term.In addition,due to the abundance of local resources around the interference term,the attention inhibition process is longer for the more prominent interference term,which is characterized by easy capture attention and difficult to be suppressed.