Invariant Effects of Working Memory Load in the Face of Competition

The influence of working memory load on visual selective attention was examined using a dual selective attention and working memory task. This dual task required participants to ignore distractor faces while categorizing superimposed celebrity names under low or high memory loads. Surprisingly, both memory load conditions produced equivalent interference effects from concurrent famous (compared to anonymous) distractor faces, and equivalent subsequent negative priming effects. These findings were consistent across all four of the present experiments, but they diverge from the dual-task memory load literature on interference and negative priming. Implications regarding the interaction between working memory and attentional selection are addressed.