Attentional control constrains visual short-term memory: Insights from developmental and individual differences
Attentional control constrains visual short-term memory: Insights from developmental and individual differences
复制标题
DOI：
10.1080/17470218.2010.492622
复制
发表时间：
2012-01-01
影响因子：
1.7
通讯作者：
Scerif, Gaia
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Astle, Duncan E.;Nobre, Anna C.;Scerif, Gaia
注意控制偏向助记表征的机制引起了人们的极大兴趣，但仍知之甚少。随着注意力和记忆力在童年时期逐渐发展，并在不同个体之间变化，评估不同年龄和能力的参与者对助记内容的关注程度可以阐明他们之间的相互作用。在实验1中，7岁、10岁的儿童和成年人被要求报告一个探测物品是否属于之前展示的四个物品阵列的一部分。初始数组可以是无提示的，在其前面(“precued”)，或在(“recued”)之后是一个空间线索，该空间线索将注意力定向到潜在物品位置之一。两种线索类型都显著提高了跨组表现，儿童回溯性注意控制的个体差异预测了他们的视觉短期和工作记忆广度，而他们在没有线索的情况下的基本记忆能力没有预测。实验2在阵列和随后的定向线索之间施加了可变延迟。与10岁的儿童相比，成人对提示的益处更大，但即使在线索跟随序列近3秒的情况下，这种优势仍然存在，这表明定向对两个年龄段的持久短期表征都有效。研究结果表明，在控制对记忆的注意力的能力方面，存在着显著的发展和个体差异，而这些差异反过来又限制了视觉短期记忆能力。
The mechanisms by which attentional control biases mnemonic representations have attracted much interest but remain poorly understood. As attention and memory develop gradually over childhood and variably across individuals, assessing how participants of different ages and ability attend to mnemonic contents can elucidate their interplay. In Experiment 1, 7-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults were asked to report whether a probe item had been part of a previously presented four-item array. The initial array could either be uncued, be preceded ("precued"), or followed ("retrocued") by a spatial cue orienting attention to one of the potential item locations. Performance across groups was significantly improved by both cue types, and individual differences in children's retrospective attentional control predicted their visual short-term and working memory span, whereas their basic ability to remember in the absence of cues did not. Experiment 2 imposed a variable delay between the array and the subsequent orienting cue. Cueing benefits were greater in adults than in 10-year-olds, but they persisted even when cues followed the array by nearly 3 seconds, suggesting that orienting operated on durable short-term representations for both age groups. The findings indicate that there are substantial developmental and individual differences in the ability to control attention to memory and that in turn these differences constrain visual short-term memory capacity.