External cues improve visual working memory encoding in the presence of salient distractors in schizophrenia.

ABSTRACT:

Background

People with schizophrenia (PSZ) are impaired in attentional prioritization of non-salient but relevant stimuli over salient distractors during visual working memory (VWM) encoding. Conversely, guidance of top-down attention by external predictive cues is intact. Yet, it is unknown whether this preserved ability can help PSZ encode more information in the presence of salient distractors.

Methods

We employed a visuospatial change-detection task using four Gabor patches with differing orientations in 66 PSZ and 74 healthy controls (HCS). Two Gabor patches flickered which were designated either as targets or distractors and either a predictive or a non-predictive cue was displayed to manipulate top-down attention, resulting in four conditions.

Results

We observ

SUBMITTER: Barnes-Scheufler CV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11413357 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature