Increasing the Load on Executive Working Memory Reduces the Search Performance in the Natural Scenes: Evidence from Eye Movements

Does the load on executive working memory (WM) reduce search performance in a natural scene? Previous studies have suggested that a load on the executive working memory reduces the search performance in the artificial scenes. Hence, we investigated whether this interference effect still existed in the meaningful scenes consisting of many sources of information. Participants concurrently completed an object visual search task and an executive working memory task. In the visual search task, participants searched for an object either cued by a word (Experiment 1) or a picture (Experiment 2). Firstly, we directly manipulated the visual salience and semantic consistency of searched objects and then critically compared the accountancy of the word and picture as a guiding effect on the target template information. Experiment 1 indicated the effects of executive WM load on search performance. As evident in high-load conditions, the semantic and visual salience information helped in modulating search efficiency in cases where the object violated the scene context with a low salience. However, Experiment 2 did not reveal the effects of load on the executive working memory. A comparison between both the experiments revealed a “reversal effect” in the non-load conditions. These results suggested varied effects of executive working memory load on the search performance in a natural scene, which was modulated by the specificity of the target template and other target features.