Instituto de Investigaciones Psicologicas (IIPsi).
Department of Experimental Psychology.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2020 Jul;46(7):667-680. doi: 10.1037/xhp0000740. Epub 2020 Apr 16.
Perceptual grouping leads to interference when target and distractors are integrated within the same percept. Cognitive control allows breaking this automatic tendency by focusing selectively on target information. Thus, interference can be modulated either by goal-directed mechanisms or by physical features of stimuli that help to segregate the target from distractors. In three experiments, participants had to respond to the left-right direction of a central arrow, flanked by two arrows on each side. Sometimes, instructions requested to also stay vigilant for detecting an infrequent vertical/horizontal displacement of the target, thus loading working memory. Although it has been usually shown that concurrent working memory load hinders target selection, the present research provides evidence that interference may either increase or decrease depending on whether dual tasking draws attention to the grouping (horizontal displacement) or to an orthogonal dimension (vertical displacement), revealing counterintuitive benefits of working memory load. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
知觉分组会导致目标和干扰项在同一感知中被整合时产生干扰。认知控制可以通过有选择地关注目标信息来打破这种自动趋势。因此，干扰可以通过目标导向机制或刺激的物理特征来调节，这些特征有助于将目标与干扰项区分开来。在三个实验中，参与者必须对中央箭头的左右方向做出反应，箭头的两侧各有两个箭头。有时，指令要求也要警惕检测目标不频繁的垂直/水平位移，从而加载工作记忆。尽管通常表明，同时进行的工作记忆负荷会阻碍目标选择，但本研究提供的证据表明，干扰可能会增加或减少，具体取决于双重任务是将注意力吸引到分组（水平位移）还是正交维度（垂直位移）上，从而揭示了工作记忆负荷的反直觉益处。
