Emotional faces in visual working memory are not easily forgotten: Distractor effects on memory-guided visual search
Emotional faces in visual working memory are not easily forgotten: Distractor effects on memory-guided visual search
复制标题
视觉工作记忆中的情绪面孔不容易被遗忘：记忆引导视觉搜索的分散效应
DOI：
10.1167/14.10.37
复制
发表时间：
2014
影响因子：
1.8
通讯作者：
Sawaki R
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Sawaki R
视觉搜索通常由工作记忆中表示的目标引导。在这里，我们询问最近编码但即将被遗忘的情感信息是否也会使视觉搜索产生偏差。尽管已经证明，愤怒的面孔比快乐的面孔更容易在视觉工作记忆中保留，但仍不清楚它们是否更难以忘记。本研究通过在参与者执行记忆引导的视觉搜索任务时监测眼球运动来调查这个问题。在这项任务中，参与者首先编码并在工作记忆中维护两张面孔（不同的身份和不同的情绪表达：快乐、愤怒或中性）。然后，在 3 秒的保留间隔中，会出现一个提示，指示哪张脸要持续保留为目标，哪一张要忘记。最后，参与者在六张面孔的数组中搜索目标面孔，这些面孔由先前呈现的表达每种可能情绪的身份组成。我们发现，对与待遗忘 (TBF) 干扰项（TBF 身份加 TBF 情感）匹配的搜索数组项的注视并不频繁，持续时间短，并且不依赖于 TBF 情感（愤怒、快乐）。然而，当 TBF 情绪为愤怒与快乐时，对将目标身份与 TBF 情绪相结合的干扰者面孔的注视时间明显更长。这一发现表明，愤怒表情的表征很难从视觉工作记忆中抑制，并且这些信息随后会影响视觉搜索。
Visual search is typically guided by goals that are represented in working memory. Here we ask whether recently encoded but to-be-forgotten emotional information can also bias visual search. Although it has been demonstrated that angry faces are better maintained in visual working memory than happy faces, it remains unknown whether they are more difficult to forget. The present study investigated this issue by monitoring eye movements while participants performed a memory-guided visual search task. In the task, participants first encoded and then maintained two faces (different identities with different emotional expressions: happy, angry, or neutral) in working memory. Then, part way through a 3 second retention interval, a cue was presented to indicate which face to continuously maintain as target and which to forget. Finally, participants searched for the target face among an array of six faces comprised of each of the previously presented identities expressing each possible emotion. We found that fixations on the search array item matching the to-be forgotten (TBF) distractor (TBF identity plus TBF emotion) were infrequent, short in duration, and did not depend on the TBF emotion (angry, happy). However, fixations on the distractor face that combined target identity with the TBF emotion were significantly longer when the TBF emotion was angry versus happy. This finding suggests that representation of an angry expression is difficult to suppress from visual working memory and that such information can subsequently influence visual search.