Individual differences in working memory capacity and visual search: The roles of top-down and bottom-up processing

Sobel, Kenith V.; Gerrie, Matthew P.; Poole, Bradley J.; Kane, Michael J. · 2007 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03194109

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Summary

This study investigates the relationship between individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) and visual search efficiency, specifically examining the roles of top-down (goal-directed) versus bottom-up (stimulus-driven) attentional mechanisms. Previous research by Kane et al. (2006) found no correlation between WMC and search efficiency in standard conjunction search tasks, despite evidence that higher WMC facilitates attention control in other domains, such as ignoring distractions or withholding habitual responses. The authors hypothesized that WMC influences visual search primarily when the task demands significant top-down control to override bottom-up salience or habitual response tendencies. To test this, the researchers developed a modified conjunction search task involving 40 undergraduate participants, who were categorized into high- and low-WMC groups based on an automated operation span task. The experimental design manipulated two key factors: distractor orientation and distractor ratio. In the "distinct-orientations" condition, distractors had orientations clearly different from the target, allowing bottom-up salience to guide search efficiently. In the "similar-orientations" condition, distractor orientations were subtle, reducing bottom-up guidance and requiring greater top-down control to prioritize the target’s orientation. Additionally, the trial distribution in the distinct-orientations condition was skewed to induce a habitual strategy of searching through the target-color group, creating a conflict when this strategy became inefficient in certain trials. The results demonstrated that WMC did not affect performance in the distinct-orientations condition, where bottom-up mechanisms provided sufficient guidance; high- and low-WMC subjects performed equivalently. However, in the similar-orientations condition, particularly when the target-color group was larger and thus less salient, low-WMC subjects exhibited significantly steeper response time slopes than high-WMC subjects. This indicates that low-WMC individuals struggled to override the habitual, bottom-up-driven strategy of searching by color, leading to decreased efficiency as the number of color distractors increased. High-WMC subjects maintained more efficient search performance by effectively exerting top-down control to prioritize the less salient orientation feature. The findings clarify why previous studies failed to find WMC effects in visual search: standard conjunction searches often rely heavily on bottom-up salience, minimizing the need for executive control. This study establishes that WMC is critical for visual search only when top-down mechanisms are required to suppress misleading bottom-up cues or habitual responses. These results support the view that WMC is closely linked to the ability to exert controlled attention, specifically in contexts where automatic processing is insufficient or counterproductive.

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Topics

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• visual search
• cognitive capacity variation