Signal intrusion explains divergent effects of visual distraction on working memory

• DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/zctew_v1
• Publication Date: 2025-03-12T21:24:07Z
• Authors: Ziyao Zhang; Jarrod Lewis-Peacock
• Keywords: SIGNAL (programming language)

Perceptual distraction distorts visual working memories. Recent research has shown divergenteffects of on memory performance, including attractive biases, impairing memoryprecision, and increasing guess rate, indicating multiple mechanisms interferences.Here, we propose a novel signal intrusion model (TCC-Intrusion) to reconcile those discrepantresults. We hypothesized that sensory interference is driven by the integration target signaland an intrusive distractor signal. Model comparisons showed TCC-Intrusion had superiorfit error distributions across three delayed-estimation tasks with (N = 220)compared other candidate models. According model, intrusions decreasedalong target-distractor dissimilarity, in accordance recruitment hypothesis.Moreover, successfully replicated divergent effects memorybias, precision, using this one mechanism. Together, these results suggestthat perceptual distractors affect memories through unified mechanism signalintrusion.