Paying attention to working memory: Similarities in the spatial distribution of attention in mental and physical space

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• 作者：Muhammet Ikbal Sahan ; Tom Verguts ; Carsten Nicolas Boehler…
• 刊名：Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：August 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：23
• 期：4
• 页码：1190-1197
• 全文大小：748 KB
• 刊物主题：Cognitive Psychology;
• 出版者：Springer US
• ISSN：1531-5320
• 卷排序：23

文摘

Selective attention is not limited to information that is physically present in the external world, but can also operate on mental representations in the internal world. However, it is not known whether the mechanisms of attentional selection operate in similar fashions in physical and mental space. We studied the spatial distributions of attention for items in physical and mental space by comparing how successfully distractors were rejected at varying distances from the attended location. The results indicated very similar distribution characteristics of spatial attention in physical and mental space. Specifically, we found that performance monotonically improved with increasing distractor distance relative to the attended location, suggesting that distractor confusability is particularly pronounced for nearby distractors, relative to distractors farther away. The present findings suggest that mental representations preserve their spatial configuration in working memory, and that similar mechanistic principles underlie selective attention in physical and in mental space.KeywordsSpatial attentionWorking memoryMental representationsDistractor confusionDistributionOrienting