Department of Psychology, University of California, 502 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2021 Oct;49(7):1453-1472. doi: 10.3758/s13421-021-01166-1. Epub 2021 Mar 24.
Given natural memory limitations, people can generally attend to and remember high-value over low-value information even when cognitive resources are depleted in older age and under divided attention during encoding, representing an important form of cognitive control. In the current study, we examined whether tasks requiring overlapping processing resources may impair the ability to selectively encode information in dual-task conditions. Participants in the divided-attention conditions of Experiment 1 completed auditory tone-distractor tasks that required them to discriminate between tones of different pitches (audio-nonspatial) or auditory channels (audio-spatial), while studying items in different locations in a grid (visual-spatial) differing in reward value. Results indicated that, while reducing overall memory accuracy, neither cross-modal auditory distractor task influenced participants' ability to selectively encode high-value items relative to a full attention condition, suggesting maintained cognitive control. Participants in Experiment 2 studied the same important visual-spatial information while completing demanding color (visual-nonspatial) or pattern (visual-spatial) discrimination tasks during study. While the cross-modal visual-nonspatial task did not influence memory selectivity, the intra-modal visual-spatial secondary task eliminated participants' sensitivity to item value. These results add novel evidence of conditions of impaired cognitive control, suggesting that the effectiveness of top-down, selective encoding processes is attenuated when concurrent tasks rely on overlapping processing resources.
由于自然记忆的限制，即使在老年人认知资源耗竭和编码时分心的情况下，人们也可以关注和记住高价值信息而不是低价值信息，这代表了一种重要的认知控制形式。在当前的研究中，我们研究了需要重叠处理资源的任务是否会在双重任务条件下损害选择性编码信息的能力。实验 1 中注意力分散条件下的参与者完成了听觉音高干扰任务，要求他们辨别不同音高（音频非空间）或不同听觉通道（音频空间）的声音，同时在网格中不同位置的不同奖励价值的项目。结果表明，虽然降低了整体记忆准确性，但两种跨模态听觉干扰任务都没有影响参与者相对于全注意条件选择性编码高价值项目的能力，表明认知控制得以维持。在实验 2 中，参与者在学习过程中完成了要求较高的颜色（视觉非空间）或模式（视觉空间）辨别任务的同时，研究了相同的重要视觉空间信息。虽然跨模态视觉非空间任务没有影响记忆选择性，但内模态视觉空间次要任务消除了参与者对项目价值的敏感性。这些结果提供了认知控制受损的条件的新证据，表明当并行任务依赖于重叠的处理资源时，自上而下的选择性编码过程的有效性会降低。
