Relation between individual differences in working memory capacity and attentional capture in visual three-stimuli oddball tasks

Abstract

Individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC), as measured by the reading span test, are relatedto the inhibition of task-irrelevant information during the test. We examined whether this controlled attention is domain-specific using event-related brain potential (ERP) during visual three-stimulus oddball tasks. The reading span test was used to evaluate the WMC of 52 students. Participants were required to respond to rare targets (15%) and ignore both infrequent non-targets (15%) and frequent standards (70%). In one condition the same geometric figure was repeatedly presented as a non-target, while in another condition, novel unrecognizable visual stimuli were non-targets. The low-span group (n = 13) showed larger non-target P300 amplitude in response to the repeatedly presented non-target than did the high-spangroup (n = 13). Thus, it is speculated seemed that task-irrelevant information captured more of the participant's attention in the low-span group than in the high-span group. WMC may depend on the inhibition of attention to task-irrelevant information not only in the verbal domain but also in the processing of visual stimuli.