Department of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China.
Neurosci Lett. 2010 Dec 17;486(3):202-6. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2010.09.052. Epub 2010 Sep 25.
Recent work shows that items maintained in working memory could guide the orienting of attention in visual search, demonstrating an interesting interaction between working memory and attention. For such guidance effect, some studies emphasize the importance of search task type: for fixed-target search, task-irrelevant memory items stay inside the attentional focus and guides attention; for varied-target search, these items stay outside attentional focus and do not guide attention. With two experiments, we showed that stimulus attribute of items held in working memory can play an important role in attentional guidance. The first behavioral experiment duplicated a previous fixed-target search paradigm demonstrating robust guidance effect but failed to find such effect when the stimuli was simply changed from colored shapes to complex artificial shapes. The second event-related potential experiment duplicated a previous varied-target search paradigm that used complex shapes but did not observe any guidance effect. A clear guidance effect was found when we changed the stimuli to colored shapes. The results suggest that attentional guidance from working memory depends on stimulus attributes of the items held in working memory. When effective attribute is used, task-irrelevant items that stay outside the attentional focus are still able to guide attention.
最近的研究表明,工作记忆中的项目可以引导视觉搜索中的注意力定向,这展示了工作记忆和注意力之间的有趣相互作用。对于这种引导效应,一些研究强调了搜索任务类型的重要性:对于固定目标搜索,任务不相关的记忆项目保持在注意力焦点内并引导注意力;对于变化目标搜索,这些项目保持在注意力焦点外,不引导注意力。通过两个实验,我们表明工作记忆中保持的项目的刺激属性可以在注意力引导中发挥重要作用。第一个行为实验复制了之前的固定目标搜索范式,该范式证明了强大的引导效应,但当刺激从彩色形状简单地改变为复杂的人工形状时,没有发现这种效应。第二个事件相关电位实验复制了之前使用复杂形状的变化目标搜索范式,但没有观察到任何引导效应。当我们将刺激改变为彩色形状时,就会发现明显的引导效应。研究结果表明,工作记忆中的注意力引导取决于工作记忆中保持的项目的刺激属性。当使用有效属性时,即使任务不相关的项目保持在注意力焦点之外,它们仍然能够引导注意力。