Feature-based memory-driven attentional capture: visual working memory content affects visual attention

In 7 experiments, the authors explored whether visual attention (the ability to select relevant visual information) and visual working memory (the ability to retain relevant visual information) share the same content representations. The presence of singleton distractors interfered more strongly with a visual search task when it was accompanied by an additional memory task. Singleton distractors interfered even more when they were identical or related to the object held in memory, but only when it was difficult to verbalize the memory content. Furthermore, this content-specific interaction occurred for features that were relevant to the memory task but not for irrelevant features of the same object or for once-remembered objects that could be forgotten. Finally, memory-related distractors attracted more eye movements but did not result in longer fixations. The results demonstrate memory-driven attentional capture on the basis of content-specific representations.     

Clearing the mind: a working memory model of distraction from negative mood

The present research examined whether and how loading working memory can attenuate negative mood. In three experiments, participants were exposed to neutral, weakly negative, or strongly negative pictures followed by a task and a mood scale. Working memory demands were varied by manipulating task presence (Study 1), complexity (Study 2), and predictability (Study 3). Participants in all three experiments reported less negative moods in negative trials with high compared to low working memory demand. Working memory demands did not affect mood in the neutral trials. When working memory demands were high, participants no longer reported more negative moods in response to strongly negative pictures than to weakly negative pictures. These findings suggest that loading working memory prevents mood-congruent processing, and thereby promotes distraction from negative moods.     

Escaping capture: bilingualism modulates distraction from working memory

We ask whether bilingualism aids cognitive control over the inadvertent guidance of visual attention from working memory and from bottom-up cueing. We compare highly-proficient Catalan-Spanish bilinguals with Spanish monolinguals in three visual search conditions. In the working memory (WM) condition, attention was driven in a top-down fashion by irrelevant objects held in WM. In the Identify condition, attention was driven in a bottom-up fashion by visual priming. In the Singleton condition, attention was driven in a bottom-up fashion by including a unique distracting object in the search array. The results showed that bilinguals were overall faster than monolinguals in the three conditions, replicating previous findings that bilinguals can be more efficient than monolinguals in the deployment of attention. Interestingly, bilinguals were less captured by irrelevant information held in WM but were equally affected by visual priming and unique singletons in the search displays. These observations suggest that bilingualism aids top-down WM-mediated guidance of attention, facilitating processes that keep separate representations in WM from representations that guide visual attention. In contrast, bottom-up attentional capture by salient yet unrelated input operates similarly in bilinguals and monolinguals.     

Early, involuntary top-down guidance of attention from working memory

Four experiments explored the interrelations between working memory, attention, and eye movements. Observers had to identify a tilted line amongst vertical distractors. Each line was surrounded by a colored shape that could be precued by a matching item held in memory. Relative to a neutral baseline, in which no shapes matched the memory item, search was more efficient when the memory cue matched the shape containing the target, and it was less efficient when the cued stimulus contained a distractor. Cuing affected the shortest reaction times and the first saccade in search. The effect occurred even when the memory cue was always invalid but not when the cue did not have to be held in memory. There was also no evidence for priming effects between consecutive trials. The results suggest that there can be early, involuntary top-down directing of attention to a stimulus matching the contents of working memory.     

The role of working memory in attentional capture

Much previous research has demonstrated that visual search is typically disrupted by the presence of a unique “singleton” distractor in the search display. Here we show that attentional capture by an irrelevant color singleton during shape search critically depends on availability of working memory to the search task: When working memory is loaded in a concurrent yet unrelated verbal short-term memory task, capture increases. These findings converge with previous demonstrations that increasing working memory load results in greater distractor interference in Stroop-like tasks (de Fockert, Rees, Frith, & Lavie, 2001; Lavie, Hirst, de Fockert, & Viding, 2004), which support the hypothesis that working memory provides goal-directed control of visual selective attention allowing to minimize interference by goal-irrelevant distractors.     

Individual differences in working memory capacity and dual-process theories of the mind

Dual-process theories of the mind are ubiquitous in psychology. A central principle of these theories is that behavior is determined by the interplay of automatic and controlled processing. In this article, the authors examine individual differences in the capacity to control attention as a major contributor to differences in working memory capacity (WMC). The authors discuss the enormous implications of this individual difference for a host of dual-process theories in social, personality, cognitive, and clinical psychology. In addition, the authors propose several new areas of investigation that derive directly from applying the concept of WMC to dual-process theories of the mind.     

What's working in working memory: a role for the Central Executive

Two experiments are reported which seek to explore the nature of the Central Executive of Baddeley's (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974) model of working memory. Experiment 1 uses a dual task methodology to compare performance on two storage tasks, making use of the two slave systems, the Phonological Loop (PL) and the Visuo-Spatial Scratch Pad (VSSP). Results suggest that storage can be thought of as based on the use of slave system independent resources. Experiment 2 uses a similar approach to compare performance on 2 processing tasks, again one PL based, the other VSSP based. These results suggest that processing is based on a central, shared set of resources. The two experiments support both a multiple resources model of working memory and more specifically identify a role for the Central Executive.     

What's on your mind: The influence of the contents of working memory on choice

Information maintained in working memory (WM) has the potential to bias selective attention and limit executive attention. The current study assessed the influence of information in WM on the tasks one chooses to perform in a multitasking environment. Participants held either identities or locations in WM while performing voluntary task-switching trials on stimuli that did or did not match the information they were attempting to maintain. A bias toward performing the task associated with stimuli that had recently been encoded into WM was found. The results suggest that information in WM can influence choice within a multitasking environment.     

Conditional reasoning with a spatial content requires visuo-spatial working memory

In previous research, Toms, Morris, and Ward (1993) have shown that conditional reasoning is impaired by a concurrent task calling on executive functions but not by concurrent tasks that load on the slave systems of the working memory system as conceptualised by Baddeley and Hitch (1974). The present article replicates and extends this previous work by studying problems based on spatial as well as nonspatial relations. In the study 42 participants solved 16 types of spatial or nonspatial problems, both in a single-task condition and under concurrent matrix tapping, a task loading the visuo-spatial sketch pad. The findings were consistent with those of Toms et al. (1993) for problems with a nonspatial content. However, when the content was spatial, and only then, a dual-task impairment was observed: processing time of the first premise was lengthened, especially for problems with negations in the antecedent term, the consequent term, or both; moreover, the number of correctly solved problems with negations in both terms was smaller. The implications of these findings for the mental models theory and the mental logic theory are discussed.     

Visual working memory as the substrate for mental rotation

In mental rotation, a mental representation of an object must be rotated while the actual object remains visible. Where is this representation stored while it is being rotated? To answer this question, observers were asked to perform a mental rotation task during the delay interval of a visual working memory task. When the working memory task required the storage of object features, substantial bidirectional interference was observed between the memory and rotation tasks, and the interference increased with the degree of rotation. However, rotation-dependent interference was not observed when a spatial working memory task was used instead of an object working memory task. Thus, the object working memory subsystem—not the spatial working memory subsystem—provides the buffer in which object representations are stored while they undergo mental rotation. More broadly, the nature of the information being stored—not the nature of the operations performed on this information—may determine which subsystem stores the information.     

Attention on our mind: The role of spatial attention in visual working memory

The current study shows that spatial visual attention is used to retrieve information from visual working memory. Participants had to keep four colored circles in visual working memory. While keeping this information in memory we asked whether one of the colors was present in the array. While retrieving this information, on some trials a probe dot was presented. When this probe dot was presented at the location of the color that had to be retrieved, participants responded faster than when it was presented at another location. Our findings further elaborate the role of visual attention in working memory: not only is attention the mechanism by which information is stored into working memory, it is also the mechanism by which information is retrieved from visual working memory.     

Effect of negative emotional content on working memory and long-term memory

In long-term memory, negative information is better remembered than neutral information. Differences in processes important to working memory may contribute to this emotional memory enhancement. To examine the effect that the emotional content of stimuli has on working memory performance, the authors asked participants to perform working memory tasks with negative and neutral stimuli. Task accuracy was unaffected by the emotional content of the stimuli. Reaction times also did not differ for negative relative to neutral words, but on an n-back task using faces, participants were slower to respond to fearful faces than to neutral faces. These results suggest that although emotional content does not have a robust effect on working memory, in some instances emotional salience can impede working memory performance.     

Divergent trajectories in the aging mind: changes in working memory for affective versus visual information with age

Working memory mediates the short-term maintenance of information. Virtually all empirical research on working memory involves investigations of working memory for verbal and visual information. Whereas aging is typically associated with a deficit in working memory for these types of information, recent findings suggestive of relatively well-preserved long-term memory for emotional information in older adults raise questions about working memory for emotional material. This study examined age differences in working memory for emotional versus visual information. Findings demonstrate that, despite an age-related deficit for the latter, working memory for emotion was unimpaired. Further, older adults exhibited superior performance on positive relative to negative emotion trials, whereas their younger counterparts exhibited the opposite pattern.     

The Box Task: A tool to design experiments for assessing visuospatial working memory

The present paper describes the Box Task, a paradigm for the computerized assessment of visuospatial working memory. In this task, hidden objects have to be searched by opening closed boxes that are shown at different locations on the computer screen. The set size (i.e., number of boxes that must be searched) can be varied and different error scores can be computed that measure specific working memory processes (i.e., the number of within-search and between-search errors). The Box Task also has a developer’s mode in which new stimulus displays can be designed for use in tailored experiments. The Box Task comes with a standard set of stimulus displays (including practice trials, as well as stimulus displays with 4, 6, and 8 boxes). The raw data can be analyzed easily and the results of individual participants can be aggregated into one spreadsheet for further statistical analyses.     

Classifying retrieval strategies as a function of working memory

Strategy selection may help explain performance differences between individuals with high working memory capacity (HWMs) and low working memory capacity (LWMs) (Budd, Whitney, & Turley, (Memory & Cognition, 23, 735–748 1995); Cokely, Kelley, & Gilchrist, (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 991–997 2006). We compared the independent and spontaneous strategy use of HWMs and LWMs during a category fluency (retrieval) task that required participants to retrieve animal names. HWMs were more successful at the fluency task under normal conditions, but under increased cognitive load, there were no WM-related performance differences. One strategy (i.e., retrieving animals according to their scientific classification) significantly aided performance, irrespective of cognitive load. Under normal conditions, HWMs were more likely to use the effective strategy; however, under load, WM did not predict strategy use. Use of the classification strategy was more strongly related to retrieval performance than was WM. These results suggest that retrieval strategy use is related to WM capacity, and that employing a successful strategy may make up for WM disadvantages during a demanding retrieval task.     

Individual differences in working memory capacity and visual search: The roles of top-down and bottom-up processing

Individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) have been implicated in a variety of top-down, attention-control tasks: Higher WMC subjects better ignore irrelevant distractions and withhold habitual responses than do lower WMC subjects. Kane, Poole, Tuholski, and Engle (2006) recently attempted to extend these findings to visual search, but found no relation between WMC and search efficiency, even in difficult tasks yielding steep search slopes. Here we used a visual search task that isolated the contributions of top-down versus bottom-up mechanisms, and induced a habitual response via expectation. Searches that relied primarily on bottom-up mechanisms did not vary with WMC, but searches that relied primarily on top-down mechanisms showed an advantage for higher over lower WMC subjects.     

Multiple states in visual working memory: Evidence from oculomotor capture by memory-matching distractors

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Visual working memory (VWM) representations interact with attentional guidance, but there is controversy over whether multiple VWM items simultaneously influence...     

Stressing the mind: the effect of cognitive load and articulatory suppression on attentional guidance from working memory

Four experiments explored the effect of cognitive load on the time course of top-down guidance of attention from working memory (WM). Observers had to search for a target presented among several distractors, with the target and distractor stimuli embedded inside different objects. On half of the trials, one of the distractor objects was cued by a matching item held in WM. When a single item was maintained in memory, search performance was impaired relative to a neutral baseline, where the memory and search displays did not match. These effects of WM on subsequent search were reduced by including a verbal suppression task during the WM and search displays, and by varying the WM load. The degree of competition for resources in WM is a key factor in determining the time course and magnitude of the interaction between WM and visual selection.