He Jibo, McCarley Jason S
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2010 Feb;72(2):308-16. doi: 10.3758/APP.72.2.308.
Executive working memory (WM) load reduces the efficiency of visual search, but the mechanisms by which this occurs are not fully known. In the present study, we assessed the effect of executive load on perceptual processing during search. Participants performed a serial oculomotor search task, looking for a circle target among gapped-circle distractors. The participants performed the task under high and low executive WM load, and the visual quality (Experiment 1) or discriminability of targets and distractors (Experiment 2) was manipulated across trials. By the logic of the additive factors method (Sternberg, 1969, 1998), if WM load compromises the quality of perceptual processing during visual search, manipulations of WM load and perceptual processing difficulty should produce nonadditive effects. Contrary to this prediction, the effects of WM load and perceptual difficulty were additive. The results imply that executive WM load does not degrade perceptual analysis during visual search.
执行性工作记忆（WM）负荷会降低视觉搜索的效率，但其发生机制尚不完全清楚。在本研究中，我们评估了执行性负荷对搜索过程中知觉加工的影响。参与者执行一项连续眼动搜索任务，在有缺口的圆形干扰物中寻找圆形目标。参与者在高和低执行性WM负荷条件下执行任务，并且在各次试验中操纵视觉质量（实验1）或目标与干扰物的可辨别性（实验2）。根据相加因素法的逻辑（Sternberg，1969年，1998年），如果WM负荷在视觉搜索过程中损害了知觉加工的质量，那么WM负荷和知觉加工难度的操纵应该会产生非相加效应。与这一预测相反，WM负荷和知觉难度的效应是相加的。结果表明，执行性WM负荷在视觉搜索过程中不会降低知觉分析。
