Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Xixi Campus, Hang Zhou, 310007, People's Republic of China.
Mem Cognit. 2021 Nov;49(8):1583-1599. doi: 10.3758/s13421-021-01183-0. Epub 2021 May 27.
Recent studies have examined the role of attention in retaining bound representations in working memory (WM) and found that object-based attention plays a pivotal role. However, no study has investigated whether maintaining bound representations with more features in WM requires extra object-based attention. We investigated this by examining whether a secondary task consuming object-based attention was more disruptive to the maintenance of bindings in WM when more features were stored per object. We instructed participants to memorize three bound representations in a WM task while manipulating the number of features (two vs. three features) contained in each representation. Moreover, we manipulated whether a secondary task consuming object-based attention was interpolated into the maintenance phase of WM. If extra object-based attention was required after the addition of an extra feature in the bound representation, the secondary task would result in a greater disruption of the three- rather than two-featured binding. In two experiments, we found that the added secondary task significantly impaired the binding performance, but the performance of the two- and three-featured bindings was disrupted to the same extent. These results suggest that the presence of more features in a bound representation in WM does not require extra object-based attention.
最近的研究考察了注意在保持工作记忆（WM）中绑定表示方面的作用，发现基于对象的注意起着关键作用。然而，尚无研究探讨在 WM 中保持具有更多特征的绑定表示是否需要额外的基于对象的注意。我们通过检查在每个对象中存储的特征数量更多时，消耗基于对象的注意的次要任务是否会对 WM 中绑定的维持产生更大的干扰，来研究这个问题。我们指示参与者在 WM 任务中记住三个绑定表示，同时操纵每个表示中包含的特征数量（两个特征与三个特征）。此外，我们操纵在 WM 的维持阶段是否插入了消耗基于对象的注意的次要任务。如果在绑定表示中添加了一个额外特征后需要额外的基于对象的注意，那么次要任务将导致对三个特征绑定的干扰大于对两个特征绑定的干扰。在两项实验中，我们发现添加的次要任务显著损害了绑定性能，但对两个特征和三个特征绑定的破坏程度相同。这些结果表明，WM 中绑定表示中特征数量的增加并不需要额外的基于对象的注意。
