Guidance by working memory representations and target salience jointly affect attentional capture of distractors
摘要
Previous studies have demonstrated that top-down guidance by working memory (WM) representations can enhance processing priority for distractors, while the salience of target exerts bottom-up modulation on distractors’ attentional competition. In this study, we investigated how these two factors interact to influence distractors’ attentional capture within a relative saliency framework. Across three experiments, we examined the effects of target salience (baseline-salience, perceptual-salience, and socially salient) and WM guidance efficacy (manipulated between experiments) on distractors. In Experiment 1, where only a single color was maintained in WM, robust automatic WM guidance of attention toward distractors was observed. Notably, this effect remained unaffected by the salience level of the target, suggesting that distractors consistently maintained a processing advantage consistent with superior relative saliency in visual competition against the target. When WM load was increased in Experiment 2 by including concurrent maintenance of color, shape, and numerical information, the memory-driven capture by distractors persisted, but its magnitude declined with heightened salience of the targets. This reflects reduced automaticity in top-down WM guidance, weakening the relative saliency of WM-matched distractors relative to salient targets. In Experiment 3, where color representation priority was reduced via non-color retro-cues, a weak automatic WM guidance was observed. Distractors captured limited attention under baseline-salience target condition but no such capture was elicited when salient targets were presented, indicating a loss of the processing advantage of the memory-driven attentional capture of distractors. Collectively, these interactive competition between bottom-up target salience and top-down working-memory driven capture of distractors reveal that strong WM guidance combined with low target salience amplifies distractors’ relative saliency and facilitates attentional capture. Conversely, weakened WM guidance or high target salience diminishes distractors’ relative saliency, leading to reduced or abolished attentional capture effects of distractors.