Working memory is thought to be divided into distinct visual and verbal subsystems. Studies of visual working memory frequently use verbal working memory tasks as control conditions and/or use articulatory suppression to ensure that visual load is not transferred to verbal working memory. Using these verbal tasks relies on the assumption that the verbal working memory load will not interfere with the same processes as visual working memory. In the present study, participants maintained a visual or verbal working memory load as they simultaneously viewed scenes while their eye movements were recorded. Because eye movements and visual working memory are closely linked, we anticipated the visual load would interfere with scene-viewing (and vice versa), while the verbal load would not. Surprisingly, both visual and verbal memory loads interfered with scene-viewing behavior, while eye movements during scene-viewing did not significantly interfere with performance on either memory task. These results suggest that a verbal working memory load can interfere with eye movements in a visual task.

中文翻译：

---

视觉和语言工作记忆负荷会干扰场景观察。

工作记忆被认为分为不同的视觉和语言子系统。视觉工作记忆的研究经常使用言语工作记忆任务作为控制条件和/或使用发音抑制来确保视觉负荷不会转移到言语工作记忆中。使用这些语言任务依赖于这样一个假设，即语言工作记忆负荷不会干扰与视觉工作记忆相同的过程。在本研究中，参与者保持视觉或语言工作记忆负荷，因为他们在记录眼球运动的同时观看场景。由于眼球运动和视觉工作记忆密切相关，我们预计视觉负荷会干扰场景观看（反之亦然），而语言负荷则不会。出奇，视觉和语言记忆负荷都会干扰场景查看行为，而场景查看过程中的眼球运动不会显着干扰任一记忆任务的表现。这些结果表明，语言工作记忆负荷会干扰视觉任务中的眼球运动。