Citation

Fukuda K, Vogel EK. Psychol. Sci. 2011; 22(3): 361-368.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1227, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797611398493

PMID

21310945

Abstract

Working memory capacity reflects a core ability of the individual that affects performance on many cognitive tasks. Recent work has suggested that an important covariate of memory capacity is attentional control, and specifically that low-capacity individuals are more susceptible to attentional capture by distractors than high-capacity individuals are, with the latter being able to resist capture. Here, we tested an alternative account according to which all individuals are equally susceptible to attentional capture, but high-capacity individuals recover more quickly than low-capacity individuals. Using psychophysical and electrophysiological methods, we measured recovery time from attentional capture. In two experiments, we found that high- and low-capacity individuals showed equivalent attentional capture effects in the initial moments following capture, but that low-capacity individuals took much longer to recover than high-capacity individuals did. These results suggest that the poor attentional control associated with low capacity is due to slow disengagement from distractors.

Language: en