Title
Adding Details To The Attentional Template Offsets Search Difficulty: Evidence From Contralateral Delay Activity
Keywords
Contralateral Delay Activity (CDA); Event-Related Potentials (ERPs); Target representation; Visual search guidance; Visual working memory (VWM)
Abstract
We investigated how expected search difficultly affects the attentional template by having participants search for a teddy bear target among either other teddy bears (difficult search, high target-distractor similarity) or random nonbear objects (easy search, low target-distractor similarity). Target previews were identical in these 2 blocked conditions, and target-related visual working memory (VWM) load was measured using contralateral delay activity (CDA), an event-related potential indicating VWM load. CDA was assessed after target designation but before search display onset. Shortly after preview offset, the expectation of a difficult search produced a target-related CDA, suggesting the encoding and maintenance of target details in VWM. However, no differences in CDA were found immediately before search onset, suggesting a flexible and efficient weighting of the templates' features to reflect the expected demands of the search task. Moreover, CDA amplitude correlated with eye movement measures of search guidance in difficult search trials but not easy trials, suggesting that the utility of the attentional template is greater for more difficult searches. These findings are evidence that attentional templates depend on expected task difficulty, and that people may compensate for a more difficult search by adding details to their target representation in VWM, as measured by CDA.
Publication Date
3-1-2017
Publication Title
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
Volume
43
Issue
3
Number of Pages
429-437
Document Type
Article
Personal Identifier
scopus
DOI Link
https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000367
Copyright Status
Unknown
Socpus ID
85014105497 (Scopus)
Source API URL
https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85014105497
STARS Citation
Schmidt, Joseph and Zelinsky, Gregory J., "Adding Details To The Attentional Template Offsets Search Difficulty: Evidence From Contralateral Delay Activity" (2017). Scopus Export 2015-2019. 5858.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/scopus2015/5858