Goal dependent effect of visual working memory load on distractor interference in selective attention task

The role of the visual working memory (VWM) load on the distractor interference in the flanker task was examined within the scope of this study. This investigation was based on the Experiment 1-B of Konstantinou et al. (2014), and Experiment 3 of Yao et al. (2020), aiming to replicate the former study but obtained different results. Although Yao et al. (2020) intended to replicate the original study, there were some differences related to task design. It is unclear whether these differences are explanatory factors for the inconsistent results. Therefore, we conducted Experiment 1 (N = 54) and Experiment 2 (N = 54) with which Experiment 1-B of Konstantinou et al. (2014) and Experiment 3 of Yao et al. (2020) were replicated respectively. The results of analyses consistently demonstrated that the VWM load did not alter the interference effect in both experiments. Additional analyses comparing the data of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 confirmed that the two experiments yielded highly similar outcomes. However, it has been suggested that the possibility of verbalization of stimuli in the VWM could have effect on the results. Therefore, Experiment 3 (N =28) was designed to prevent verbalization through articulatory suppression. The results of Experiment 3 once again demonstrated that the VWM load did not alter the interference effect. Findings were associated with the possibility that the visual flanker task presented during VWM retention interval was perceived as a distractor for the representations that were allegedly carried out in the sensory domains. Therefore, the VWM storage area might have been actively changed for the sake of keeping the VWM representations away from distractor's possible distorting effect. New storage area may have not interacted with flanker task and resulted in absent load effect. The validity of this inference should be tested with future studies. Keywords: Selective attention, load theory, visual working memory, replication