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Attentional guidance by working memory differs by paradigm: an individual-differences approach.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Dowd, EW; Kiyonaga, A; Egner, T; Mitroff, SR
Published in: Attention, perception & psychophysics
April 2015

The contents of working memory (WM) have been repeatedly found to guide the allocation of visual attention; in a dual-task paradigm that combines WM and visual search, actively holding an item in WM biases visual attention towards memory-matching items during search (e.g., Soto et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31(2), 248-261, 2005). A key debate is whether such memory-based attentional guidance is automatic or under strategic control. Generally, two distinct task paradigms have been employed to assess memory-based guidance, one demonstrating that attention is involuntarily captured by memory-matching stimuli even at a cost to search performance (Soto et al., 2005), and one demonstrating that participants can strategically avoid memory-matching distractors to facilitate search performance (Woodman & Luck, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33(2), 363-377, 2007). The current study utilized an individual-differences approach to examine why the different paradigms--which presumably tap into the same attentional construct--might support contrasting interpretations. Participants completed a battery of cognitive tasks, including two types of attentional guidance paradigms (see Soto et al., 2005; Woodman & Luck, 2007), a visual WM task, and an operation span task, as well as attention-related self-report assessments. Performance on the two attentional guidance paradigms did not correlate. Subsequent exploratory regression analyses revealed that memory-based guidance in each task was differentially predicted by visual WM capacity for one paradigm, and by attention-related assessment scores for the other paradigm. The current results suggest that these two paradigms--which have previously produced contrasting patterns of performance--may probe distinct aspects of attentional guidance.

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Published In

Attention, perception & psychophysics

DOI

EISSN

1943-393X

ISSN

1943-3921

Publication Date

April 2015

Volume

77

Issue

3

Start / End Page

704 / 712

Related Subject Headings

  • Young Adult
  • Regression Analysis
  • Psychomotor Performance
  • Photic Stimulation
  • Pattern Recognition, Visual
  • Memory, Short-Term
  • Male
  • Individuality
  • Humans
  • Female
 

Citation

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Dowd, E. W., Kiyonaga, A., Egner, T., & Mitroff, S. R. (2015). Attentional guidance by working memory differs by paradigm: an individual-differences approach. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 77(3), 704–712. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-015-0847-z
Dowd, Emma Wu, Anastasia Kiyonaga, Tobias Egner, and Stephen R. Mitroff. “Attentional guidance by working memory differs by paradigm: an individual-differences approach.Attention, Perception & Psychophysics 77, no. 3 (April 2015): 704–12. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-015-0847-z.
Dowd EW, Kiyonaga A, Egner T, Mitroff SR. Attentional guidance by working memory differs by paradigm: an individual-differences approach. Attention, perception & psychophysics. 2015 Apr;77(3):704–12.
Dowd, Emma Wu, et al. “Attentional guidance by working memory differs by paradigm: an individual-differences approach.Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, vol. 77, no. 3, Apr. 2015, pp. 704–12. Epmc, doi:10.3758/s13414-015-0847-z.
Dowd EW, Kiyonaga A, Egner T, Mitroff SR. Attentional guidance by working memory differs by paradigm: an individual-differences approach. Attention, perception & psychophysics. 2015 Apr;77(3):704–712.
Journal cover image

Published In

Attention, perception & psychophysics

DOI

EISSN

1943-393X

ISSN

1943-3921

Publication Date

April 2015

Volume

77

Issue

3

Start / End Page

704 / 712

Related Subject Headings

  • Young Adult
  • Regression Analysis
  • Psychomotor Performance
  • Photic Stimulation
  • Pattern Recognition, Visual
  • Memory, Short-Term
  • Male
  • Individuality
  • Humans
  • Female