Leiden University, Institute of Psychology, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Neuropsychologia. 2011 Sep;49(11):2985-93. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.06.021. Epub 2011 Jun 28.
Dual tasks and their associated delays have often been used to examine the boundaries of processing in the brain. We used the dual-task procedure and recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate how mental rotation of a first stimulus (S1) influences the shifting of visual-spatial attention to a second stimulus (S2). Visual-spatial attention was monitored by using the N2pc component of the ERP. In addition, we examined the sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN) believed to index the retention of information in visual short-term memory. We found modulations of both the N2pc and the SPCN, suggesting that engaging mechanisms of mental rotation impairs the deployment of visual-spatial attention and delays the passage of a representation of S2 into visual short-term memory. Both results suggest interactions between mental rotation and visual-spatial attention in capacity-limited processing mechanisms indicating that response selection is not pivotal in dual-task delays and all three processes are likely to share a common resource like executive control.
双任务及其相关延迟通常被用于检查大脑处理的边界。我们使用双任务程序并记录事件相关电位 (ERP)，以研究第一个刺激 (S1) 的心理旋转如何影响对第二个刺激 (S2) 的视觉空间注意力的转移。视觉空间注意力通过 ERP 的 N2pc 成分进行监测。此外，我们检查了被认为在视觉短期记忆中保留信息的持续对侧负性 (SPCN)。我们发现 N2pc 和 SPCN 都发生了调制，这表明心理旋转机制的参与会损害视觉空间注意力的部署，并延迟 S2 的表示进入视觉短期记忆。这两个结果都表明，在容量有限的加工机制中，心理旋转和视觉空间注意力之间存在相互作用，这表明反应选择在双任务延迟中不是关键因素，所有三个过程都可能共享一个共同的资源，如执行控制。
