Abstract
Load theory of selective attention argues that high cognitive load impedes distractor avoidance (see, Lavie, 2005). We report three experiments investigating the effect of working memory (WM) load on selective attention. In our first behavioural study, we successfully replicated two experiments showing that higher WM load increases the effects of distractors in a flanker or singleton paradigm (Lavie et al 2004; Lavie & De Fockert, 2005). Considering these results, we then investigated visual attention during the viewing of complex scenes (featuring social and non-social objects), while manipulating WM load. We also explored the relationship between these tasks and ADHD-like traits, given that these traits are associated with increased distraction. In the image viewing task, we measured the degree to which fixations targeted each of two crucial elements: (1) a social element (a person in the scene) and (2) a non-social object which was edited to be high or low saliency. We tested the hypothesis that high WM load would lead to increased capture by the salient distractor. In contrast, attending to the social item might require more top-down resources and so be disrupted by WM load. Our results suggest that during image viewing the social object was fixated to a greater degree than the other object (regardless of saliency). While, there was a relationship between the degree of ADHD-like traits and performance on the memory task, WM load did not seem to affect scanning in scenes. Such findings suggest that attending to a social area in complex stimuli is surprisingly not dependent on the availability of top-down resources.