According to the load theory of attention, an active cognitive control mechanism is needed to ensure that behaviour is controlled by target-relevant information when distractors are also perceived. Although the active cognitive control mechanism consists of working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition components, predictions regarding the load effects of this mechanism were derived mostly from studies on working memory. We aimed to test whether these predictions are also valid for an inhibition component. The inhibitory load was manipulated physiologically by creating different bladder pressure and its effects on distractor interference were examined under low and high perceptual load conditions. The results indicated that the availability of inhibitory control resources was important for decreasing the interference of distractors in the low perceptual load condition and that the high perceptual load reduced the effects of distractors independently from the availability of inhibitory resources. The results were consistent with the predictions of load theory, and to the best of our knowledge, the study provided the first piece of evidence in terms of the load effect of inhibition component on distractor interference.
AllportD. A. (1977). On knowing the meaning of words we are unable to report: The effects of visual masking. In DornicS. (Ed.), Attention and performance VI (pp. 505–533). Erlbaum.
AnilA. E.KivircikB. B.BaturS.KabakçiE.KitisA.GüvenE.. . .ArkarH. (2003). The Turkish version of the Auditory Consonant Trigram Test as a measure of working memory: A normative study. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 17(2), 159–169.
4.
AronA. R.FletcherP. C.BullmoreE. T.SahakianB. J.RobbinsT. W. (2003). Stop-signal inhibition disrupted by damage to right inferior frontal gyrus in humans. Nature Neuroscience, 6(2), 115–116.
5.
AronA. R.RobbinsT. W.PoldrackR. A. (2004). Inhibition and the right inferior frontal cortex. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(4), 170–177.
6.
BannonS.GonsalvezC. J.CroftR. J.BoyceP. M. (2002). Response inhibition deficits in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Psychiatry Research, 110(2), 165–174.
7.
BenoniH.TsalY. (2010). Where have we gone wrong? Perceptual load does not affect selective attention. Vision Research, 50(13), 1292–1298.
8.
BerkmanE. T.BurklundL.LiebermanM. D. (2009). Inhibitory spillover: Intentional motor inhibition produces incidental limbic inhibition via right inferior frontal cortex. NeuroImage, 47(2), 705–712.
9.
BootW. R.BrockmoleJ. R.SimonsD. J. (2005). Attention capture is modulated in dual-task situations. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(4), 662–668.
10.
Brand-D’AbresciaM.LavieN. (2008). Task coordination between and within sensory modalities: Effects on distraction. Perception & Psychophysics, 70(3), 508–515.
11.
BroadbentD. E. (1958). Perception and communication. Pergamon Press.
12.
BroadbentD. E.CooperP. F.FitzGeraldP.ParkesK. R. (1982). The cognitive failures questionnaire (CFQ) and its correlates. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 21(1), 1–16.
13.
BrownJ. (1958). Some tests of the decay theory of immediate memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 10(1), 12–21.
14.
CatarinoA.KüpperC. S.Werner-SeidlerA.DalgleishT.AndersonM. C. (2015). Failing to forget: Inhibitory-control deficits compromise memory suppression in posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychological Science, 26(5), 604–616.
15.
ChamberlainS. R.FinebergN. A.BlackwellA. D.RobbinsT. W.SahakianB. J. (2006). Motor inhibition and cognitive flexibility in obsessive-compulsive disorder and trichotillomania. American Journal of Psychiatry, 163(7), 1282–1284.
16.
ChenZ.CaveK. R. (2013). Perceptual load vs. dilution: The roles of attentional focus, stimulus category, and target predictability. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, Article 327.
17.
ChenZ.CaveK. R. (2015). Singleton search is guided by knowledge of the target, but maybe it shouldn’t be. Vision Research, 115, 92–103.
18.
de FockertJ. W. (2013). Beyond perceptual load and dilution: A review of the role of working memory in selective attention. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, Article 287.
19.
de FockertJ. W.BremnerA. J. (2011). Release of inattentional blindness by high working memory load: Elucidating the relationship between working memory and selective attention. Cognition, 121(3), 400–408.
20.
de FockertJ. W.ReesG.FrithC. D.LavieN. (2001). The role of working memory in visual selective attention. Science, 291(5509), 1803–1806.
DiamondA. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168.
23.
DriverJ. (2001). A selective review of selective attention research from the past century. British Journal of Psychology, 92(1), 53–78.
24.
EriksenB. A.EriksenC. W. (1974). Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task. Perception & Psychophysics, 16(1), 143–149.
25.
FaulF.ErdfelderE.LangA. G.BuchnerA. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 175–191.
26.
FennE.Blandón-GitlinI.CoonsJ.PinedaC.EchonR. (2015). The inhibitory spillover effect: Controlling the bladder makes better liars. Consciousness and Cognition, 37, 112–122.
27.
ForsterS.LavieN. (2007). High perceptual load makes everybody equal. Psychological Science, 18(5), 377–381.
28.
FringsC.SchneiderK. K.FoxE. (2015). The negative priming paradigm: An update and implications for selective attention. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22(6), 1577–1597.
29.
GaspelinN.LuckS. J. (2018). The role of inhibition in avoiding distraction by salient stimuli. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(1), 79–92.
30.
GengJ. J. (2014). Attentional mechanisms of distractor suppression. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(2), 147–153.
31.
Gil-Gómez de LiañoB.StablumF.UmiltàC. (2016). Can concurrent memory load reduce distraction? A replication study and beyond. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145(1), e1–e12.
32.
GriffithsD.TadicS. D. (2008). Bladder control, urgency, and urge incontinence: Evidence from functional brain imaging. Neurourology and Urodynamics, 27(6), 466–474.
33.
ItthipuripatS.ChaK.ByersA.SerencesJ. T. (2017). Two different mechanisms support selective attention at different phases of training. PLoS Biology, 15(6), Article e2001724.
34.
JohnstonW. A.DarkV. J. (1982). In defense of intraperceptual theories of attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 8(3), 407–421.
35.
JonidesJ.SmithE. E.MarshuetzC.KoeppeR. A.Reuter-LorenzP. A. (1998). Inhibition in verbal working memory revealed by brain activation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(14), 8410–8413.
36.
KarakaşS.ErdoğanE.SakL.SoysalA. Ş.UlusoyT.Ulusoyİ. Y.AlkanS. (1999). Stroop Test TBAG Form: Standardisation for Turkish Culture, Reliability and Validity. Turkish Journal of Clinical Psyhiatry. 2(2), 75–88
37.
KonstantinouN.BealE.KingJ. R.LavieN. (2014). Working memory load and distraction: Dissociable effects of visual maintenance and cognitive control. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 76(7), 1985–1997.
38.
LappinJ. S.EriksenC. W. (1966). Use of a delayed signal to stop a visual reaction-time response. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(6), 805–811.
39.
LavieN. (1995). Perceptual load as a necessary condition for selective attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 21(3), 451–468.
40.
LavieN. (2000). Selective attention and cognitive control: Dissociating attentional functions through different types of load. In MonsellS.DriverJ. (Eds.), Attention and performance XVIII (pp. 175–194). MIT Press.
41.
LavieN. (2001). Capacity limits in selective attention: Behavioral evidence and implications for neural activity. In BraunJ.KochC.DavisJ. L. (Eds.), Visual attention and cortical circuits (pp. 49–68). MIT Press.
42.
LavieN. (2005). Distracted and confused? Selective attention under load. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(2), 75–82.
43.
LavieN. (2010). Attention, distraction, and cognitive control under load. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 143–148.
44.
LavieN.CoxS. (1997). On the efficiency of visual selective attention: Efficient visual search leads to inefficient distractor rejection. Psychological Science, 8(5), 395–396.
45.
LavieN.de FockertJ. (2006). Frontal control of attentional capture in visual search. Visual Cognition, 14(4–8), 863–876.
46.
LavieN.HirstA.De FockertJ. W.VidingE. (2004). Load theory of selective attention and cognitive control. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133(3), 339–354.
47.
LavieN.TorralboA. (2010). Dilution: A theoretical burden or just load? A reply to Tsal and Benoni (2010). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36(6), 1657–1664.
48.
LavieN.TsalY. (1994). Perceptual load as a major determinant of the locus of selection in visual attention. Perception & Psychophysics, 56(2), 183–197.
49.
MayrS.BuchnerA. (2007). Negative priming as a memory phenomenon. Zeitschrift für Psychologie/Journal of Psychology, 215(1), 35–51.
50.
MenonV.AdlemanN. E.WhiteC. D.GloverG. H.ReissA. L. (2001). Error-related brain activation during a Go/NoGo response inhibition task. Human Brain Mapping, 12(3), 131–143.
51.
MillerJ. (1987). Evidence of preliminary response preparation from a divided attention task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 13(3), 425–434.
52.
MiyakeA.FriedmanN. P.EmersonM. J.WitzkiA. H.HowerterA.WagerT. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41(1), 49–100.
53.
MöllerM.MayrS.BuchnerA. (2019). Inhibition of irrelevant response codes is affected by matching target-distractor modalities. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45(2), 189–208.
54.
MorayN. (1959). Attention in dichotic listening: Affective cues and the influence of instructions. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 11(1), 56–60.
55.
MorroneI.DeclercqC.NovellaJ.-L.BescheC. (2010). Aging and inhibition processes: The case of metaphor treatment. Psychology and Aging, 25(3), 697–701.
56.
MukhopadhyayS.StowersL. (2020). Choosing to urinate. Circuits and mechanisms underlying voluntary urination. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 60, 129–135.
57.
MurphyG.GreeneC. M. (2016). Perceptual load induces inattentional blindness in drivers. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 30(3), 479–483.
58.
PosnerM. I. (1982). Cumulative development of attentional theory. American Psychologist, 37(2), 168–179.
ReesG.FrithC. D.LavieN. (1997). Modulating irrelevant motion perception by varying attentional load in an unrelated task. Science, 278(5343), 1616–1619.
61.
SchwartzS.VuilleumierP.HuttonC.MaravitaA.DolanR. J.DriverJ. (2004). Attentional load and sensory competition in human vision: Modulation of fMRI responses by load at fixation during task-irrelevant stimulation in the peripheral visual field. Cerebral Cortex, 15(6), 770–786.
62.
SimonS. S.TuschE. S.HolcombP. J.DaffnerK. R. (2016). Increasing working memory load reduces processing of cross-modal task-irrelevant stimuli even after controlling for task difficulty and executive capacity. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, Article 380.
63.
SpielbergerC. D. (1983). State-trait anxiety inventory for adults. Mind Garden.
64.
StroopJ. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(6), 643–662.
65.
TipperS. P. (1985). The negative priming effect: Inhibitory priming by ignored objects. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 37(4), 571–590.
66.
TipperS. P. (2001). Does negative priming reflect inhibitory mechanisms? A review and integration of conflicting views. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 54(2), 321–343.
67.
TukM. A.TrampeD.WarlopL. (2011). Inhibitory spillover: Increased urination urgency facilitates impulse control in unrelated domains. Psychological Science, 22(5), 627–633.
68.
WangL.FengC.MaiX.JiaL.ZhuX.LuoW.LuoY. J. (2016). The impact of perceptual load on the non-conscious processing of fearful faces. PLOS ONE, 11(5), Article e0154914.
69.
WodkaE. L.Mark MahoneE.BlanknerJ. G.Gidley LarsonJ. C.FotedarS.DencklaM. B.MostofskyS. H. (2007). Evidence that response inhibition is a primary deficit in ADHD. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 29(4), 345–356.
70.
YaoN.GuoY.LiuY.ShenM.GaoZ. (2020). Visual working-memory capacity load does not modulate distractor processing. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82(7), 3291–3313.
