| Affiliation: | (1) Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Imperial College London, Charing Cross Hospital, St. Dunstan’s Road, London, W6 8RP, UK;(2) Department of Clinical Neurology, University of Oxford, Level 6, West Wing, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headley Way, Headington, Oxford, OX3 9DU, UK;(3) UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK;(4) Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL, 12 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3BG, UK;(5) School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3AT, UK |
| Abstract: | In the present experiments, we examined whether shifts of attention selectively interfere with the maintenance of both verbal and spatial information in working memory and whether the interference produced by eye movements is due to the attention shifts that accompany them. In Experiment 1, subjects performed either a spatial or a verbal working memory task, along with a secondary task requiring fixation or a secondary task requiring shifts of attention. The results indicated that attention shifts interfered with spatial, butnot with verbal, working memory, suggesting that the interference is specific to processes within the visuospatial sketchpad. In Experiment 2, subjects performed a primary spatial working memory task, along with a secondary task requiring fixation, an eye movement, or an attention shift executed in the absence of an eye movement. The results indicated that both eye movements and attention shifts interfered with spatial working memory. Eye movements interfered to a much greater extent than shifts of attention, however, suggesting that eye movements may contribute a unique source of interference, over and above the interference produced by the attention shifts that accompany them. |
