Lavie, Nilli and De Fockert, J. W.. 2005. The role of working memory in attentional capture. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(4), pp. 669-674. ISSN 1069-9384 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

Much previous research has demonstrated that visual search is typically disrupted by the presence of a unique “singleton” distractor in the search display. Here we show that attentional capture by an irrelevant color singleton during shape search critically depends on availability of working memory to the search task: When working memory is loaded in a concurrent yet unrelated verbal short-term memory task, capture increases. These findings converge with previous demonstrations that increasing working memory load results in greater distractor interference in Stroop-like tasks (de Fockert, Rees, Frith, & Lavie, 2001; Lavie, Hirst, de Fockert, & Viding, 2004), which support the hypothesis that working memory provides goal-directed control of visual selective attention allowing to minimize interference by goal-irrelevant distractors.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196756
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Psychology
Dates:	Date Event 2005 Published
Item ID:	5113
Date Deposited:	07 Mar 2011 10:03
Last Modified:	30 Jun 2017 14:58
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/5113

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