Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2022 Oct;75(10):1904-1918. doi: 10.1177/17470218211066475. Epub 2022 Jan 4.
We report two experiments investigating the effect of working memory (WM) load on selective attention. Experiment 1 was a modified version of Lavie et al. and confirmed that increasing memory load disrupted performance in the classic flanker task. Experiment 2 used the same manipulation of WM load to probe attention during the viewing of complex scenes while also investigating individual differences in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) traits. In the image-viewing task, we measured the degree to which fixations targeted each of two crucial objects: (1) a social object (a person in the scene) and (2) a non-social object of higher or lower physical salience. We compared the extent to which increasing WM load would change the pattern of viewing of the physically salient and socially salient objects. If attending to the social item requires greater default voluntary top-down resources, then the viewing of social objects should show stronger modulation by WM load compared with viewing of physically salient objects. The results showed that the social object was fixated to a greater degree than the other object (regardless of physical salience). Increased salience drew fixations away from the background leading to slightly increased fixations on the non-social object, without changing fixations on the social object. Increased levels of ADHD-like traits were associated with fewer fixations on the social object, but only in the high-salient, low-load condition. Importantly, WM load did not affect the number of fixations on the social object. Such findings suggest rather surprisingly that attending to a social area in complex stimuli is not dependent on the availability of voluntary top-down resources.
我们报告了两项实验，旨在研究工作记忆（WM）负荷对选择性注意的影响。实验 1 是对 Lavie 等人实验的修改版，证实了增加记忆负荷会破坏经典侧抑制任务中的表现。实验 2 使用相同的 WM 负荷操作来探测在观看复杂场景时的注意力，同时也调查了注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）特征的个体差异。在图像观看任务中，我们测量了注视两个关键物体的程度：（1）社会物体（场景中的人）和（2）较高或较低物理显著性的非社会物体。我们比较了增加 WM 负荷会如何改变对物理显著性和社会显著性物体的观看模式。如果关注社会项目需要更大的默认自愿自上而下的资源，那么与观看物理显著性物体相比，观看社会物体应该受到 WM 负荷的更强调节。结果表明，社会物体比其他物体（无论物理显著性如何）受到更多的注视。增加的显著性将注视吸引到背景之外，导致对非社会物体的注视略有增加，而对社会物体的注视不变。ADHD 样特质的水平升高与对社会物体的注视次数减少有关，但仅在高显著性、低负荷条件下。重要的是，WM 负荷不会影响对社会物体的注视次数。这些发现令人惊讶地表明，在复杂刺激中关注社会区域并不依赖于自愿自上而下资源的可用性。
