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Action planning mediates guidance of visual attention from working memory

Action planning mediates guidance of visual attention from working memory
Action planning mediates guidance of visual attention from working memory
Visual search is impaired when a salient task-irrelevant stimulus is presented together with the target. Recent research has shown that this attentional capture effect is enhanced when the salient stimulus matches working memory (WM) content, arguing in favor of attention guidance from WM. Visual attention was also shown to be closely coupled with action planning. Preparing a movement renders action-relevant perceptual dimensions more salient and thus increases search efficiency for stimuli sharing that dimension. The present study aimed at revealing common underlying mechanisms for selective attention, WM, and action planning. Participants both prepared a specific movement (grasping or pointing) and memorized a color hue. Before the movement was executed towards an object of the memorized color, a visual search task (additional singleton) was performed. Results showed that distraction from target was more pronounced when the additional singleton had a memorized color. This WM-guided attention deployment was more pronounced when participants prepared a grasping movement. We argue that preparing a grasping movement mediates attention guidance from WM content by enhancing representations of memory content that matches the distractor shape (i.e., circles), thus encouraging attentional capture by circle distractors of the memorized color. We conclude that templates for visual search, action planning, and WM compete for resources and thus cause interferences.
2090-0058
1-11
Feldmann-Wustefeld, Tobias
ad65a041-3b03-4374-8483-2eb878a6c909
Schubö, Anna
b76528b7-1aba-424c-ba62-242cbc0bfcd9
Feldmann-Wustefeld, Tobias
ad65a041-3b03-4374-8483-2eb878a6c909
Schubö, Anna
b76528b7-1aba-424c-ba62-242cbc0bfcd9

Feldmann-Wustefeld, Tobias and Schubö, Anna (2015) Action planning mediates guidance of visual attention from working memory. Journal of Ophthalmology, 2015, 1-11, [387378]. (doi:10.1155/2015/387378).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Visual search is impaired when a salient task-irrelevant stimulus is presented together with the target. Recent research has shown that this attentional capture effect is enhanced when the salient stimulus matches working memory (WM) content, arguing in favor of attention guidance from WM. Visual attention was also shown to be closely coupled with action planning. Preparing a movement renders action-relevant perceptual dimensions more salient and thus increases search efficiency for stimuli sharing that dimension. The present study aimed at revealing common underlying mechanisms for selective attention, WM, and action planning. Participants both prepared a specific movement (grasping or pointing) and memorized a color hue. Before the movement was executed towards an object of the memorized color, a visual search task (additional singleton) was performed. Results showed that distraction from target was more pronounced when the additional singleton had a memorized color. This WM-guided attention deployment was more pronounced when participants prepared a grasping movement. We argue that preparing a grasping movement mediates attention guidance from WM content by enhancing representations of memory content that matches the distractor shape (i.e., circles), thus encouraging attentional capture by circle distractors of the memorized color. We conclude that templates for visual search, action planning, and WM compete for resources and thus cause interferences.

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e-pub ahead of print date: 18 June 2015
Published date: 2015

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 424413
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/424413
ISSN: 2090-0058
PURE UUID: 3a98d9b3-1a4e-4250-beee-58414d686f95

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Date deposited: 05 Oct 2018 11:37
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 21:29

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Contributors

Author: Tobias Feldmann-Wustefeld
Author: Anna Schubö

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