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

Full Abstract

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.

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Author information

Author/s: Soto, David (D); Humphreys, Glyn W (GW);

Affiliation: Division of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Imperial College London, London, England. d.soto(-atsign-)imperial.ac.uk

Grants: (Agency:United Kingdom Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) ; (Agency:United Kingdom Medical Research Council)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Perception & psychophysics (Percept Psychophys), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Jul; vol 70 (issue 5) : pp 924-34

Dates: Created 2008/07/10; Completed 2008/08/12;

PMID: 18613638, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adolescent
Adult
Attention
Cognition
Female
Humans

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