Working memory guidance of visual attention to threat in offenders

Aggression and trait anger have been linked to attentional biases toward angry faces and attribution of hostile intent in ambiguous social situations. Memory and emotion play a crucial role in social-cognitive models of aggression but their mechanisms of influence are not fully understood. Combining a memory task and a visual search task, this study investigated the guidance of attention allocation toward naturalistic face targets during visual search by visual working memory (WM) templates in 113 participants who self-reported having served a custodial sentence. Searches were faster when angry faces were held in working memory regardless of the emotional valence of the visual search target. Higher aggression and trait anger predicted increased working memory modulated attentional bias. These results are consistent with the Social-Information Processing model, demonstrating that internal representations bias attention allocation to threat and that the bias is linked to aggression and trait anger.

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Foggy windows: Pupillary responses during task preparation

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1177/1747021817740856 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 71 (10) ◽

pp. 2235-2248 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Alexandra Trani ◽

Paul Verhaeghen

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Visual Search ◽

Search Task ◽

Visual Search Task ◽

Memory Task ◽

Pupil Dilation ◽

Attentional Resources ◽

Task Preparation ◽

Pupillary Responses ◽

Post Trial

We investigated pupil dilation in 96 subjects during task preparation and during a post-trial interval in a visual search task and an auditory working memory task. Completely informative difficulty cues (easy, medium, or hard) were presented right before task preparation to examine whether pupil dilation indicated advance mobilisation of attentional resources; functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have argued for the existence of such task preparation, and the literature shows that pupil dilation tracks attentional effort during task performance. We found, however, little evidence for such task preparation. In the working memory task, pupil size was identical across cues, and although pupil dilation in the visual search task tracked the cue, pupil dilation predicted subsequent performance in neither task. Pupil dilation patterns in the post-trial interval were more consistent with an effect of emotional reactivity. Our findings suggest that the mobilisation of attentional resources in the service of the task does not occur during the preparatory interval, but is delayed until the task itself is initiated.

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Automatic Selection of Irrelevant Object Features Through Working Memory

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169.56.3.165 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 56 (3) ◽

pp. 165-172 ◽

Cited By ~ 31

Author(s):

David Soto ◽

Glyn W. Humphreys

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Visual Search ◽

Memory Task ◽

Search Display ◽

Target Line ◽

Search Performance ◽

Distractor Object ◽

Automatic Selection ◽

Object Features ◽

Selection Of

Recent research has shown that the contents of working memory (WM) can guide the early deployment of attention in visual search. Here, we assessed whether this guidance occurred for all attributes of items held in WM, or whether effects are based on just the attributes relevant for the memory task. We asked observers to hold in memory just the shape of a coloured object and to subsequently search for a target line amongst distractor lines, each embedded within a different object. On some trials, one of the objects in the search display could match the shape, the colour or both dimensions of the cue, but this object never contained the relevant target line. Relative to a neutral baseline, where there was no match between the memory and the search displays, search performance was impaired when a distractor object matched both the colour and the shape of the memory cue. The implications for the understanding of the interaction between WM and selection are discussed.

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A secondary task is not always costly: Context‐based guidance of visual search survives interference from a demanding working memory task

British Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1111/bjop.12346 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 110 (2) ◽

pp. 381-399 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Efsun Annac ◽

Xuelian Zang ◽

Hermann J. Müller ◽

Thomas Geyer

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Visual Search ◽

Secondary Task ◽

Memory Task

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Object working memory load and perceptual similarity in visual search for multiple targets

Experimental Psychology (Russia) ◽

10.17759/exppsy.2019120309 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (3) ◽

pp. 119-134

Author(s):

K.S. Kozlov ◽

E.S. Gorbunova

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Visual Search ◽

Search Task ◽

Visual Search Task ◽

Memory Load ◽

Memory Task ◽

Common Mechanism ◽

Perceptual Similarity ◽

Working Memory Load ◽

Subsequent Search Misses

Subsequent search misses can occur during visual search for several targets. SSM is a decrease in accuracy at finding a second target after successful detection of a first one. Two experiments investigated the effect of object working memory load, target stimuli similarity and the similarity of stimuli in visual search task and working memory tasks on the SSM. It was found that targets perceptual similarity is significant, as well as memory load in case of working memory task and visual search task stimuli similarity. In addition, we found a significant interaction between working memory load and number of shared features between two target stimuli, which may indicate a common mechanism underlying the role of working memory load and perceptual similarity factors.

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Greater discrimination difficulty during perceptual learning leads to stronger and more distinct representations

10.31219/osf.io/ru7t6 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Vencislav Popov ◽

Lynne Reder

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Visual Search ◽

Perceptual Learning ◽

Prior Knowledge ◽

Memory Task ◽

Search Display ◽

False Alarms ◽

Specific Character ◽

Beneficial Effects ◽

Search Training

Despite the conventional wisdom that it is more difficult to find a target among similar distractors, this study demonstrates that the advantage of searching for a target among dissimilar distractors is short-lived, and that high target-to-distractor (TD) similarity during visual search training can have beneficial effects for learning. Participants with no prior knowledge of Chinese performed 12 hour-long sessions over 4 weeks, where they had to find a briefly presented target character among a set of distractors. At the beginning of the experiment, high TD similarity hurt performance, but the effect reversed during the first session and remained positive throughout the remaining sessions. This effect was due primarily to reducing false alarms on trials in which the target was absent from the search display. In addition, making an error on a trial with a specific character was associated with slower visual search RTs on the subsequent repetition of the character, suggesting that participants paid more attention in encoding the characters after false alarms. Finally, the benefit of high TD similarity during visual search training transferred to a subsequent n-back working memory task. These results suggest that greater discrimination difficulty likely induces stronger and more distinct representations of each character.

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Visual Search Facilitation in Repeated Displays Depends on Visuospatial Working Memory

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000125 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 59 (1) ◽

pp. 47-54 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Angela A. Manginelli ◽

Franziska Geringswald ◽

Stefan Pollmann

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Visual Search ◽

Control Experiment ◽

Memory Load ◽

Contextual Cueing ◽

Long Term Memory ◽

Visuospatial Working Memory ◽

Working Memory Load ◽

Memory Resources

When distractor configurations are repeated over time, visual search becomes more efficient, even if participants are unaware of the repetition. This contextual cueing is a form of incidental, implicit learning. One might therefore expect that contextual cueing does not (or only minimally) rely on working memory resources. This, however, is debated in the literature. We investigated contextual cueing under either a visuospatial or a nonspatial (color) visual working memory load. We found that contextual cueing was disrupted by the concurrent visuospatial, but not by the color working memory load. A control experiment ruled out that unspecific attentional factors of the dual-task situation disrupted contextual cueing. Visuospatial working memory may be needed to match current display items with long-term memory traces of previously learned displays.

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