Patterson L, Kahan TA. Is the alerting-congruency interaction that is seen in experiments with stimulus-response motor associations moderated by a concurrent working-memory load?
Acta Psychol (Amst) 2022;
225:103541. [PMID:
35203012 DOI:
10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103541]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/29/2021] [Revised: 01/28/2022] [Accepted: 02/18/2022] [Indexed: 11/01/2022] Open
Abstract
The mechanisms underlying attention, distraction, and cognitive control have been widely studied, and results consistently show that reaction times are affected by alerting cues as well as by concurrent distraction. In addition, when distractors have pre-existing directional motor associations, alerting and distractor congruency interact in a manner where distractors have a larger effect when people are alerted to an upcoming target relative to when people are not alerted to the target's presentation. However, does a concurrent working memory load moderate this interaction in multitasking experiments, and if so, does it magnify or suppress this effect? The current study (N = 40) finds that although a memory-load significantly slows reaction times it does not moderate the alerting-congruency interaction. Discussion focuses on theoretical and applied implications of this empirical result.
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