Cai Biye, Wang Jinjin, Sang Hanbin, Zhang Zonghao, Wang Aijun
Department of Psychology, Research Center for Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Soochow University, Suzhou, China.
School of Physical Education and Sports Science, Soochow University, Suzhou, China.
Front Psychol. 2024 Jul 3;15:1417557. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1417557. eCollection 2024.
Representations in working memory can affect distractor suppression in human visual search, and this process is modulated by a separate top-down cognitive control. An increasing body of research has demonstrated that patients with substance use disorder (SUD) have deficits in cognitive control over filtering interference by perceptual distractors. However, their ability to resist proactive interference from working memory has received comparatively less attention.
Here, we investigate this issue by employing a working memory/visual search dual-task paradigm. An intervening gap-location search task was instructed to be performed while participants memorized a written color word, with congruent auditory information present during the memory encoding phase on half of the trials.
Results showed that there was a reliable response time (RT) advantage when the meaning of the memory sample agreed with the color of one of the distractors under the visual alone condition. However, such a result was only found in the control group. More importantly, both groups exhibited comparable facilitation under the audiovisual condition, with the facilitation effect appearing later in the SUD group. Furthermore, the facilitation effect was superior in magnitude and time course under the audiovisual condition to the visual alone condition.
These findings highlight how patients with SUD resist distractor interference at the memory level and extend our understanding of how working memory, selective attention, and audiovisual enhancement interact to optimize perceptual decisions in patients with SUD.
工作记忆中的表征会影响人类视觉搜索中的干扰抑制，并且这一过程受到一种独立的自上而下的认知控制的调节。越来越多的研究表明，物质使用障碍（SUD）患者在对感知干扰物进行过滤干扰的认知控制方面存在缺陷。然而，他们抵抗来自工作记忆的主动干扰的能力相对较少受到关注。
在此，我们通过采用工作记忆/视觉搜索双任务范式来研究这个问题。在参与者记忆一个书面颜色词时，指导他们执行一个中间的间隙位置搜索任务，在一半的试验中，记忆编码阶段会有一致的听觉信息出现。
结果表明，在仅视觉条件下，当记忆样本的含义与其中一个干扰物的颜色一致时，存在可靠的反应时间（RT）优势。然而，这样的结果仅在对照组中发现。更重要的是，在视听条件下两组表现出相当的促进作用，且SUD组的促进作用出现得更晚。此外，在视听条件下，促进作用在幅度和时间进程上优于仅视觉条件。
这些发现突出了SUD患者在记忆水平上如何抵抗干扰物干扰，并扩展了我们对工作记忆、选择性注意和视听增强如何相互作用以优化SUD患者感知决策的理解。
