Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, 450 Research Drive, Levine Science Research Center, Box 90999, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2012 Aug;19(4):639-46. doi: 10.3758/s13423-012-0253-7.
Across many studies, researchers have found that representations in working memory (WM) can guide visual attention toward items that match the features of the WM contents. While some researchers have contended that this occurs involuntarily, others have suggested that the impact of WM contents on attention can be strategically controlled. Here, we varied the probability that WM items would coincide with either targets or distractors in a visual search task to examine (1) whether participants could intentionally enhance or inhibit the influence of WM items on attention and (2) whether cognitive control over WM biases would also affect access to the memory contents in a surprise recognition test. We found visual search to be faster when the WM item coincided with the search target, and this effect was enhanced when the memory item reliably predicted the location of the target. Conversely, visual search was slowed when the memory item coincided with a search distractor, and this effect was diminished, but not abolished, when the memory item was reliably associated with distractors. This strategic dampening of the influence of WM items on attention came at a price to memory, however, as participants were slowest to perform WM recognition tests on blocks in which the WM contents were consistently invalid. These results document that attentional capture by WM contents is partly, but not fully, malleable by top-down control, which appears to adjust the state of the WM contents to optimize search behavior. These data illustrate the role of cognitive control in modulating the strength of WM biases of selection, and they support a tight coupling between WM and attention.
在许多研究中，研究人员发现工作记忆 (WM) 中的表示可以引导视觉注意力朝向与 WM 内容特征匹配的项目。虽然一些研究人员认为这种情况是无意识发生的，但也有研究人员提出，WM 内容对注意力的影响可以通过策略来控制。在这里，我们在视觉搜索任务中改变 WM 项目与目标或分心物匹配的概率，以检验 (1) 参与者是否可以有意增强或抑制 WM 项目对注意力的影响，以及 (2) 对 WM 偏差的认知控制是否也会影响在惊喜识别测试中对记忆内容的访问。我们发现，当 WM 项目与搜索目标相匹配时，视觉搜索会更快，而当记忆项目可靠地预测目标的位置时，这种效果会增强。相反，当记忆项目与搜索分心物相匹配时，视觉搜索会变慢，而当记忆项目与分心物可靠相关联时，这种效果会减弱，但不会消除。然而，这种对 WM 项目对注意力影响的策略性抑制是以记忆为代价的，因为参与者在 WM 内容始终无效的块中进行 WM 识别测试时最慢。这些结果证明了注意力对 WM 内容的捕捉在一定程度上是可以通过自上而下的控制来改变的，但并不是完全可以改变的，这种控制似乎会调整 WM 内容的状态以优化搜索行为。这些数据说明了认知控制在调节选择的 WM 偏差强度方面的作用，并支持 WM 和注意力之间的紧密耦合。
