Abstract
The effectiveness of distractor-filtering is a potentially important determinant of working memory capacity (WMC). However, a distinction between the contributions of distractor-filtering at WM encoding as opposed to filtering during maintenance has not been made and the assumption is that these rely on the same mechanism. Within 2 experiments, 1 conducted in the laboratory with 21 participants, and the other played as a game on smartphones (n = 3,247) we measure WMC without distractors, and present distractors during encoding or during the delay period of a WM task to determine performance associated with distraction at encoding and during maintenance. Despite differences in experimental setting and paradigm design between the 2 studies, we show a unique contribution to WMC from both encoding and delay distractor performance in both experiments, while controlling for performance in the absence of distraction. Thus, within 2 separate experiments, 1 involving an extremely large cohort of 3,247 participants, we show a dissociation between encoding and delay distractor-filtering, indicating that separate mechanisms may contribute to WMC.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 960-967 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2014 |
Keywords
- Adult
- Ascorbic Acid
- Attention
- Benserazide
- Cell Phones
- Control Groups
- Double-Blind Method
- Female
- Humans
- Levodopa
- Male
- Memory, Short-Term
- Orientation
- Pattern Recognition, Visual
- Perceptual Masking
- Placebo Effect
- Reaction Time
- Sensory Gating
- Young Adult