Pan Yi, Han Yu, Zuo Wuheng
Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
College of Education, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2019 Nov;81(8):2722-2731. doi: 10.3758/s13414-019-01780-x.
Previous research has shown that holding a color word in working memory can produce interference effects in an intervening color-identification task, which mimics the classic color-word Stroop effect. Although this finding has previously been considered to suggest that the content of working memory can have behavioral consequences similar to those of externally perceived stimuli, it has remained unclear whether active internal maintenance of a color word indeed makes a critical contribution to the working memory Stroop effect. In the present study, we addressed this matter by asking participants to perform a color-identification task following display of either a congruent or an incongruent color word. By controlling for encoding strategy and/or maintenance demand across Experiments 1-4, we consistently showed that the magnitude of the congruency effect in color-identification performance was markedly larger when the recently presented color word was actively retained in working memory, as compared to when the color word was perceptually identified without working memory processing, when the color word had once been remembered but was no longer being actively maintained in working memory, or when the color word was retro-cued to be irrelevant to the working memory task. The findings therefore demonstrate a critical role for active internal maintenance of a color word in producing the working memory Stroop effect. In addition, Experiment 5 further showed that the working memory Stroop effect was sustained over time during the retention interval. Moreover, we found that the intervening color-identification task conversely influenced working memory maintenance, leading to poorer memory performance on incongruent than on congruent trials. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the linkage between working memory and attention.
先前的研究表明，在工作记忆中保留一个颜色词会在一个中间的颜色识别任务中产生干扰效应，这类似于经典的颜色词斯特鲁普效应。尽管这一发现此前被认为表明工作记忆的内容可以产生与外部感知刺激类似的行为后果，但尚不清楚对颜色词的主动内部维持是否确实对工作记忆斯特鲁普效应做出了关键贡献。在本研究中，我们通过要求参与者在呈现一致或不一致的颜色词后执行颜色识别任务来解决这个问题。通过在实验1-4中控制编码策略和/或维持需求，我们一致表明，与在没有工作记忆处理的情况下对颜色词进行感知识别、颜色词曾经被记住但不再在工作记忆中被主动维持、或者颜色词被反向提示与工作记忆任务无关时相比，当最近呈现的颜色词被主动保留在工作记忆中时，颜色识别表现中的一致性效应的大小明显更大。因此，这些发现证明了对颜色词的主动内部维持在产生工作记忆斯特鲁普效应中起关键作用。此外，实验5进一步表明，工作记忆斯特鲁普效应在保持间隔期间随时间持续存在。而且，我们发现中间的颜色识别任务反过来影响工作记忆维持，导致在不一致试验中的记忆表现比在一致试验中更差。我们讨论了这些发现对于理解工作记忆与注意力之间联系的意义。
