Abstract
Binding theories postulate an integration of stimulus and response features into temporary episodic traces or event files. In general, in the visual binding literature, attention is considered to be necessary to feature binding, and a higher cognitive load can lead to worse performance. On the other hand, in stimulus-response binding theories, central attention is not regarded as necessary in binding effects. A possible discrepancy between the visual feature binding findings and the findings in stimulus-response binding studies could lie in the amount of central load implemented, whereas another discrepancy was related to a specific type of process that was manipulated. In the present study, load was manipulated in three levels, such as no load, low load, and high load, and the binding effects were tested under each condition. Load was manipulated by using a secondary task, which was to be carried out simultaneously with the primary task. Additionally, the influence of targeting different working memory processes (maintenance and updating) was examined by varying the time point of the presentation of the secondary task. The results indicate that, under high load, binding effects are observed if memory contents are merely maintained, but not observed when memory contents are actively updated.
Highlights
The world around us is filled with a number of different stimuli, which are more or less relevant to our current goals
The crucial threeway interaction of load × response relation × distractor relation indicating that the strength of the distractor-response binding effects was modulated by load and only significant in the error rates
While no significant modulation of the Distractor-Response Binding (DRB) effect by load was observed in the reaction times (RTs), such a modulation was observed in the error rates
Summary
The world around us is filled with a number of different stimuli, which are more or less relevant to our current goals. Treisman (1988) called this a “binding problem,” and suggested that, in her feature integration theory (FIT) of attention, all of these different visual features must be integrated to accurately perceive objects around us. This feature binding is necessary in the perception of objects and in the planning of any actions, for example, we must plan which effector is to be used, in which direction a movement is to be made, and what orientation the effector must be to achieve the goal.
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