Department of Psychology and the Center for Mind and Brain, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China.
Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2018 Sep 17;8(1):13876. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-32144-4.
Recent studies have shown that the representation of an item in visual working memory (VWM) can bias the deployment of attention to stimuli in the visual scene possessing the same features. When multiple item representations are simultaneously held in VWM, whether these representations, especially those held in a non-prioritized or accessory status, are able to bias attention, is still controversial. In the present study we adopted an eye tracking technique to shed light on this issue. In particular, we implemented a manipulation aimed at prioritizing one of the VWM representation to an active status, and tested whether attention could be guided by both the prioritized and the accessory representations when they reappeared as distractors in a visual search task. Notably, in Experiment 1, an analysis of first fixation proportion (FFP) revealed that both the prioritized and the accessory representations were able to capture attention suggesting a significant attentional guidance effect. However, such effect was not present in manual response times (RT). Most critically, in Experiment 2, we used a more robust experimental design controlling for different factors that might have played a role in shaping these findings. The results showed evidence for attentional guidance from the accessory representation in both manual RTs and FFPs. Interestingly, FFPs showed a stronger attentional bias for the prioritized representation than for the accessory representation across experiments. The overall findings suggest that multiple VWM representations, even the accessory representation, can simultaneously interact with visual attention.
最近的研究表明，视觉工作记忆（VWM）中项目的表示可以偏向视觉场景中具有相同特征的刺激的注意力分配。当多个项目表示同时保存在 VWM 中时，这些表示，特别是那些处于非优先或附属状态的表示，是否能够偏向注意力，仍然存在争议。在本研究中，我们采用眼动追踪技术来阐明这个问题。具体来说，我们实施了一项操作，旨在将 VWM 表示之一优先化为活跃状态，并测试了当它们在视觉搜索任务中重新出现为干扰物时，注意力是否可以被优先化和附属表示引导。值得注意的是，在实验 1 中，首次注视比例（FFP）的分析表明，优先化和附属表示都能够吸引注意力，表明存在显著的注意力引导效应。然而，这种效应在手反应时间（RT）中并不存在。最重要的是，在实验 2 中，我们使用了更稳健的实验设计来控制可能对这些发现产生影响的不同因素。结果表明，即使是附属表示，也可以从注意力中得到指导。有趣的是，FFP 在手动 RT 和 FFPs 中都显示出对优先化表示的更强的注意力偏向。总体研究结果表明，多个 VWM 表示，甚至附属表示，都可以同时与视觉注意力相互作用。
