Out with the old? The role of selective attention in retaining targets in partial report

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Lindsey, Dakota R. B. Bundesen, Claus Kyllingsbæk, Søren Petersen, Anders Logan, Gordon D.
Copyright Year	2017
Abstract	In the partial-report task, subjects are asked to report only a portion of the items presented. Selective attention chooses which objects to represent in short-term memory (STM) on the basis of their relevance. Because STM is limited in capacity, one must sometimes choose which objects are removed from memory in light of new relevant information. We tested the hypothesis that the choices among newly presented information and old information in STM involve the same process—that both are acts of selective attention. We tested this hypothesis using a two-display partial-report procedure. In this procedure, subjects had to select and retain relevant letters (targets) from two sequentially presented displays. If selection in perception and retention in STM are the same process, then irrelevant letters (distractors) in the second display, which demanded attention because of their similarity to the targets, should have decreased target report from the first display. This effect was not obtained in any of four experiments. Thus, choosing objects to keep in STM is not the same process as choosing new objects to bring into STM.
Starting Page	117
Ending Page	137
Page Count	21
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
DOI	10.3758/s13414-016-1214-4
PubMed reference number	27743258
Journal	Medline
Volume Number	79
Journal	Attention, perception & psychophysics
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/logan/LindseyBundesenKyllingsbaekPetersenLogan2017.pdf
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-016-1214-4
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article