School of Mental Health and Psychological Sciences, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China.
Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, Hefei, China.
Psych J. 2024 Dec;13(6):893-902. doi: 10.1002/pchj.790. Epub 2024 Jul 31.
To utilize the resource of working memory efficiently, the brain actively suppresses irrelevant information to focus cognitive resources on the task at hand. However, whether task-irrelevant self-related information can be suppressed is still an open question. This study explores the inhibitory effects of various types of identity-associated information (self, friend, stranger) with an irrelevant distracting paradigm, in which participants are required to memorize the color while ignoring the shape during a memory array. In the subsequent test array, participants are asked to judge whether the color of the test item is the same as the memorized one, while the ignored shape features could also change. The results are as follows. (1) Self-associated information survived the inhibitory effect no matter whether the interstimulus interval (ISI) was short or long. (2) Stranger-associated information remained inhibitory effect in a long ISI (3000 ms). The results indicate that self-associated information can bypass the executive system and remain active in working memory processing.
为了有效地利用工作记忆资源，大脑会主动抑制无关信息，将认知资源集中在手头的任务上。然而，无关的自我相关信息是否可以被抑制仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。本研究采用一种无关分心范式来探究各种身份相关信息（自我、朋友、陌生人）的抑制效应，要求参与者在记忆数组中记忆颜色，同时忽略形状。在随后的测试数组中，参与者被要求判断测试项的颜色是否与记忆中的颜色相同，而被忽略的形状特征也可能会发生变化。结果如下。(1) 自我相关信息无论在短还是长的刺激间间隔（ISI）下都能抵抗抑制效应。(2) 在长 ISI（3000ms）中，陌生人相关信息仍然具有抑制效应。结果表明，自我相关信息可以绕过执行系统并在工作记忆处理中保持活跃。
