Working memory capacity accounts for the ability to switch between object-based and location-based allocation of visual attention

Abstract

Bleckley, Durso, Crutchfield, Engle, and Khanna (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 884-889, 2003) found that visual attention allocation differed between groups high or low in working memory capacity (WMC). High-span, but not low-span, subjects showed an invalid-cue cost during a letter localization task in which the letter appeared closer to fixation than the cue, but not when the letter appeared farther from fixation than the cue. This suggests that low-spans allocated attention as a spotlight, whereas high-spans allocated their attention to objects. In this study, we tested whether utilizing object-based visual attention is a resource-limited process that is difficult for low-span individuals. In the first experiment, we tested the uses of object versus locationbased attention with high and low-span subjects, with half of the subjects completing a demanding secondary load task. Under load, high-spans were no longer able to use objectbased visual attention. A second experiment supported the hypothesis that these differences in allocation were due to high-spans using object-based allocation, whereas low-spans used location-based allocation. Keywords Working memory . AttentionFor some time now, there has been a debate in the literature about the nature of visual attention allocation. Do people allocate their attention to objects or to locations? Several studies have shown that the nature of the task itself can change whether people tend to use an object-based-rather than location-based-allocation of visual attention

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Working Memory Training Improves Emotion Regulation Ability

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“…These individuals would demonstrate reduced attention control abilities in a variety of tasks even when goal maintenance and proactive control are not necessary (but conflict resolution and reactive control are). Furthermore, these individuals may experience broader deficits in attention control such as inabilities to configure attention to particular objects or spatial locations (Bleckley, Durso, Crutchfield, Engle, & Khanna, 2003;Bleckley, Foster, & Engle, 2015). Furthermore, these individuals may have particular problems filtering out irrelevant information and preventing attentional capture (Fukuda & Vogel, 2009Vogel, McCollough, & Machizawa, 2005), which may be unrelated to lapses of attention and mind-wandering.…”