Dataset Information

Working memory-driven attention towards a distractor does not interfere with target feature perception.

ABSTRACT: The contents of working memory (WM) can influence where we attend-but can it also interfere with what we see? Active maintenance of visual items in WM biases attention towards WM-matching objects, and also enhances early perceptual processing of WM-matching items (e.g., more accurate perceptual discrimination). Here, we asked whether a WM-matching distractor interferes with perceptual processing of a target's features. In a dual-task paradigm, participants maintained a shape in WM across an intervening visual search task, during which they had to reproduce the colour of a designated target item using a continuous-report technique. Importantly, the WM shape could match the target item, a distractor item, or no item in the search array. When the WM shape matched a distractor, we found no evidence of systematic perceptual interference (i.e., swapping or mixing with the distractor colour), but observed only general disruptions in target processing (i.e., decreased target accuracy). These results suggest that when visual attention is inadvertently drawn to a WM-matching distractor, any resultant automatic perceptual processing may be too transient or weak to significantly interfere with perceptual processing of the target's features.

SUBMITTER: Dowd EW

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7529337 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Working memory-driven attention towards a distractor does not interfere with target feature perception.

Dowd Emma Wu EW Nag Samoni S Golomb Julie D JD

Visual cognition 20190905 9-10

The contents of working memory (WM) can influence where we attend-but can it also interfere with what we see? Active maintenance of visual items in WM biases attention towards WM-matching objects, and also enhances early perceptual processing of WM-matching items (e.g., more accurate perceptual discrimination). Here, we asked whether a WM-matching distractor <i>interferes</i> with perceptual processing of a target's features. In a dual-task paradigm, participants maintained a shape in WM across ...[more]

PMID: 33013176

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Project description:Ignoring distracting information and updating current contents are essential components of working memory (WM). Yet, although both require controlling irrelevant information, it is unclear whether they have the same effects on recall and produce the same level of misbinding errors (incorrectly joining the features of different memoranda). Moreover, the likelihood of misbinding may be affected by the feature similarity between the items already encoded into memory and the information that has to be filtered out (ignored) or updated into memory. Here, we investigate these questions. Participants were sequentially presented with two pairs of arrows. The first pair of arrows always had to be encoded into memory, but the second pair either had to be ignored (ignore condition) or allowed to displace the previously encoded items (update condition). To investigate the effect of similarity on recall, we also varied, in a factorial manner, whether the items that had to be ignored or updated were presented in the same or different colours and/or same or different spatial locations to the original memoranda. By applying a computational model, we were able to quantify the levels of misbinding. Ignoring, but not updating, increased overall recall error as well as misbinding rates, even when accounting for the retention period. This indicates that not all manipulations of attention in WM are equal in terms of their effects on recall and misbinding. Misbinding rates in the ignore condition were affected by the colour and spatial congruence of relevant and irrelevant information to a greater extent than in the update condition. This finding suggests that attentional templates are used to evaluate relevant and irrelevant information in different ways during ignoring and updating. Together, the results suggest that differences between the two functions might occur due to higher levels of attentional compartmentalisation - or protection - during updating compared to ignoring.

Project description:BackgroundEmotional stimuli used as targets of working memory (WM) tasks can moderate age-related differences in WM performance, showing that aging is associated with reductions in negativity bias. This phenomenon is referred to as the positivity effect. However, there is little research on whether emotional distractors have a similar moderating effect. Moreover, the underlying neural mechanism of this effect has not been studied. In this study, we examined the behavioral and neurophysiological basis for age differences in resistance to emotional distractors within WM.MethodsOlder adults (n = 30, ages 60-74) and young adults (n = 35, ages 19-26) performed a 2-back task in which a digit was superimposed on a face with a happy, angry, or neutral expression as a distractor. Event-related potential (ERP) was simultaneously recorded to assess P2, N2, and later positive potential (LPP) amplitudes.ResultsOlder adults were less accurate and slower than young adults on the WM task. Moreover, the results demonstrated a significant interaction between age and emotional valence on response accuracy, young adults' performance was worse when the distractor was neutral or positive than when it was negative, but there was no effect of the emotional valence of distractors on older adults' WM performance. ERP analyses revealed greater P2 amplitude in older adults than young adults, regardless of the emotional valence of distractors. However, older adults and young adults did not differ on N2 or LPP amplitude, and negative distractors elicited greater N2 than positive distractors in both age groups.ConclusionsThe behavioral findings provided evidence of age-related reductions in negativity bias. Thus, the behavioral measures indicated a positivity effect in WM. However, the ERP results did not show this same interaction. These discrepant results raise questions about whether and to what extent older and young adults differ in controlling the effect of emotional distractors in WM.

Dataset Information

Working memory-driven attention towards a distractor does not interfere with target feature perception.

Publications

Working memory-driven attention towards a distractor does not interfere with target feature perception.

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