Tasks with high perceptual load engaging full capacity will simply leave no capacity for perception of irrelevant distractor. Research on the role of perceptual load in selective attention was promoted by the hypothesis that perception has limited capacity but processes all stimuli in an automatic mandatory fashion until it runs out of capacity. When a template being retained in WM matched the target of visual search task, the attention can be automatically guided to the location of the target, and the search efficiency was accordingly improved. On the other hand, WM was also found to influence the selective attention. Specifically, the high perceptual load in a relevant task facilitates the filtering to irrelevant information. Some studies suggested that a major determinant of selective attention is the level of perceptual load in a relevant task. Accordingly, we had developed the selective attention mechanisms to focus on the information relevant to our current goals. Because of the limited processing ability, the brain can only process small part of them at one time. Moment to moment, our sensory system is bombed by a tremendous amount of information. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedĭata Availability: All relevant data are available through the Dryad database with the DOI: doi: 10.5061/dryad.23n65.įunding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31170980, 81271477), the Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of PR China (201107), the New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-11-0698), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SWU1009001).Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Received: JanuAccepted: Published: June 22, 2015Ĭopyright: © 2015 Tan et al. PLoS ONE 10(6):Įditor: Dezhong Yao, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, CHINA (2015) The Competitive Influences of Perceptual Load and Working Memory Guidance on Selective Attention. Interestingly, this initial capture of attention by WM could be modulated by the level of perceptual load and the parietal lobe mediates target selection at the discrimination stage.Ĭitation: Tan J, Zhao Y, Wang L, Tian X, Cui Y, Yang Q, et al. These results suggest that in selective attention, the information held in WM could capture attention at the early stage of visual processing in the occipital cortex. Merely identifying the cue produced no effect on the P1 or N1 component. Standardized Low Resolution Electrical Tomography Analysis (sLORETA) showed that the WM guidance effect and the perceptual load effect on attention can be localized into the occipital area and parietal lobe, respectively. The memory guidance effect on N1 was eliminated by high perceptual load. The interaction between perceptual load and WM guidance was significant for the posterior N1 component. The ERP results revealed an obvious WM guidance effect in P1 component with invalid trials eliciting larger P1 than neutral trials, regardless of the level of perceptual load. ![]() Behavioural data showed that high perceptual load eliminated the attentional capture by WM. To study this issue, behavioral performances and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded when participants were presented with a cue to either identify or hold in memory and had to perform a visual search task subsequently, under conditions of low or high perceptual load. An intriguing but unsolved question is what will happen when selective attention is influenced by both perceptual load and WM guidance. However, the biased competition model suggests that the contents of working memory (WM) can guide attentional selection automatically, even when this guidance is detrimental to visual search. The perceptual load theory in selective attention literature proposes that the interference from task-irrelevant distractor is eliminated when perceptual capacity is fully consumed by task-relevant information.
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