Individual differences in working memory capacity and divided attention in dichotic listening |
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Authors: | Gregory J H Colflesh Andrew R A Conway |
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Institution: | Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois 60607, USA. colflesh@uic.edu |
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Abstract: | The controlled attention theory of working memory suggests that individuals with greater working memory capacity (WMC) are
better able to control or focus their attention than individuals with lesser WMC. This relationship has been observed in a
number of selective attention paradigms including a dichotic listening task (Conway, Cowan, & Bunting, 2001) in which participants
were required to shadow words presented to one ear and ignore words presented to the other ear. Conway et al. found that when
the participant’s name was presented to the ignored ear, 65% of participants with low WMC reported hearing their name, compared
to only 20% of participants with high WMC, suggesting greater selective attention on the part of high WMC participants. In
the present study, individual differences in divided attention were examined in a dichotic listening task, in which participants
shadowed one message and listened for their own name in the other message. Here we find that 66.7% of high WMC and 34.5% of
low WMC participants detected their name. These results suggest that as WMC capacity increases, so does the ability to control
the focus of attention, with high WMC participants being able to flexibly “zoom in” or “zoom out” depending on task demands. |
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