TY - JOUR
T1 - Value-driven attentional capture is modulated by the contents of working memory
T2 - An EEG study
AU - Hinault, T.
AU - Blacker, K. J.
AU - Gormley, M.
AU - Anderson, B. A.
AU - Courtney, S. M.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements This work was supported by a Johns Hopkins Science of Learning Institute Fellowship to KJB, and by NIH grant RO1-DA013165 to S.M.C.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, Psychonomic Society, Inc.
PY - 2019/4/15
Y1 - 2019/4/15
N2 - Attention and working memory (WM) have previously been shown to interact closely when sensory information is being maintained. However, when non-sensory information is maintained in WM, the relationship between WM and sensory attention may be less strong. In the current study, we used electroencephalography to evaluate whether value-driven attentional capture (i.e., allocation of attention to a task-irrelevant feature previously associated with a reward) and its effects on either sensory or non-sensory WM performance might be greater than the effects of salient, non-reward-associated stimuli. In a training phase, 19 participants learned to associate a color with reward. Then, participants were presented with squares and encoded their locations into WM. Participants were instructed to convert the spatial locations either to another type of sensory representation or to an abstract, relational type of representation. During the WM delay period, task-irrelevant distractors, either previously-rewarded or non-rewarded, were presented, with a novel color distractor in the other hemifield. The results revealed lower alpha power and larger N2pc amplitude over posterior electrode sides contralateral to the previously rewarded color, compared to ipsilateral. These effects were mainly found during relational WM, compared to sensory WM, and only for the previously rewarded distractor color, compared to a previous non-rewarded target color or novel color. These effects were associated with modulations of WM performance. These results appear to reflect less capture of attention during maintenance of specific location information, and suggest that value-driven attentional capture can be mitigated as a function of the type of information maintained in WM.
AB - Attention and working memory (WM) have previously been shown to interact closely when sensory information is being maintained. However, when non-sensory information is maintained in WM, the relationship between WM and sensory attention may be less strong. In the current study, we used electroencephalography to evaluate whether value-driven attentional capture (i.e., allocation of attention to a task-irrelevant feature previously associated with a reward) and its effects on either sensory or non-sensory WM performance might be greater than the effects of salient, non-reward-associated stimuli. In a training phase, 19 participants learned to associate a color with reward. Then, participants were presented with squares and encoded their locations into WM. Participants were instructed to convert the spatial locations either to another type of sensory representation or to an abstract, relational type of representation. During the WM delay period, task-irrelevant distractors, either previously-rewarded or non-rewarded, were presented, with a novel color distractor in the other hemifield. The results revealed lower alpha power and larger N2pc amplitude over posterior electrode sides contralateral to the previously rewarded color, compared to ipsilateral. These effects were mainly found during relational WM, compared to sensory WM, and only for the previously rewarded distractor color, compared to a previous non-rewarded target color or novel color. These effects were associated with modulations of WM performance. These results appear to reflect less capture of attention during maintenance of specific location information, and suggest that value-driven attentional capture can be mitigated as a function of the type of information maintained in WM.
KW - Alpha power
KW - Attentional capture
KW - EEG
KW - Value
KW - Working memory
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U2 - 10.3758/s13415-018-00663-2
DO - 10.3758/s13415-018-00663-2
M3 - Article
C2 - 30460482
AN - SCOPUS:85057114619
VL - 19
SP - 253
EP - 267
JO - Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience
JF - Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience
SN - 1530-7026
IS - 2
ER -