Institute for Mind and Biology, The University of Chicago, Biopsychological Sciences Building (BPSB), 940 E 57th St., Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Department of Psychology, University of California, 900 University Ave., Riverside, CA 92521, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of California, 900 University Ave., Riverside, CA 92521, USA.
Cognition. 2024 Jan;242:105638. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105638. Epub 2023 Oct 14.
Working memory (WM) contents can guide attention toward matching sensory information in the environment, but there are mixed findings regarding whether only a single prioritized item or multiple items held in WM can guide attention. The present study examines the limit of WM-guided attention with a novel task procedure and mouse trajectory analysis. Specifically, we introduced a perceptual-matching task utilizing the continuous estimation procedure within the maintenance interval of a WM task for one or two colors. We found that the overall perceptual matching mouse trajectory were robustly biased toward the location of WM-match color on the color-wheel (i.e., attraction bias), but only at memory set size one. However, the analysis of circular mouse trajectory distributions, through hierarchical Bayesian modeling, revealed two separable central peaks at both memory set sizes. Furthermore, model-free analysis demonstrated that the perceptual matching mouse trajectory patterns were similar regardless of memory set sizes. Together, these results support the single-item account and highlight the utility of mouse trajectory analyses in hypothesis testing in experimental psychology.
工作记忆（WM）的内容可以引导注意力朝向与环境中匹配的感觉信息，但关于 WM 中仅单个优先项目还是多个项目可以引导注意力，存在混合的研究结果。本研究通过一种新的任务程序和鼠标轨迹分析来检验 WM 引导注意的极限。具体来说，我们引入了一种利用 WM 任务的维持间隔内连续估计程序的知觉匹配任务，用于一个或两个颜色。我们发现，整体知觉匹配鼠标轨迹强烈偏向于色轮上 WM 匹配颜色的位置（即吸引偏向），但仅在记忆集大小为 1 时。然而，通过分层贝叶斯建模对圆形鼠标轨迹分布的分析显示，在两个记忆集大小上都有两个可分离的中心峰。此外，无模型分析表明，无论记忆集大小如何，知觉匹配鼠标轨迹模式都相似。总的来说，这些结果支持单个项目的解释，并强调了在实验心理学中使用鼠标轨迹分析进行假设检验的效用。
