The participants’ task was to identify the target letter by pressing a key for B, P, or R (the keys 1, 2, or 3) as quickly and accurately as possible (based on the original study by Kane, Bleckley, Conway, & Engle, 2001). Participants received, in order, 10 practice trials to learn the response mapping, 15 practice trials 40 test trials. Proportion correct was the dependent measure. Disengagement task. The Disengagement task consisted of two parts. In the first part, the threshold Selleckchem Bcl 2 inhibitor target exposure duration was individually

obtained. In this phase, participants were presented with four place holders for 500 ms. Then, a red square frame with a gap on one side was presented as a target in one of the place holders along with three more differently colored square frames (blue,

green, or magenta) filling in the other place holders. After a target exposure duration (initially set to 500 ms), color patch masks were presented over all the place holders. Participants’ task was to report the direction of the gap on the target. The exposure duration was titrated every trial to establish a threshold target exposure duration with which each individual can perform the task with about 75% accuracy see more ( Fukuda & Vogel, 2011). Participants completed 4 blocks of 60 trials, and the average exposure duration for the last 20 trials in the last 3 blocks was used as the threshold target exposure duration. In the second part, attentional disengagement was assessed. In this phase, participants performed essentially the same task with the fixed target exposure time defined for each individual. The difference however, was that on 1/3 of the trials, a colored square frame (distractor) was briefly presented on a periphery of a place holder prior to the target onset. A half of the distractors were red (contingent), and the other half were either green, blue or magenta. Participants

completed 720 trials in total. The dependent measure was the difference in the accuracy for no distractor condition and contingent distractor MG-132 supplier condition (distractor to target SOA = 150 ms). Picture source recognition. During the encoding phase, participants were presented with a picture (30 total pictures) in one of four different quadrants onscreen for 1 s. Participants were explicitly instructed to pay attention to both the picture (item) as well as the quadrant it was located in (source). At test participants were presented with 30 old and 30 new pictures in the center of the screen. Participants were required to indicate if the picture was new or if it was old, what quadrant it was presented in via key press. Thus, on each test trial participants pressed one of five keys indicating new, top left, top right, bottom left, or bottom right. Participants had 5 s to press the appropriate key to enter their response. A participant’s score was the proportion of correct responses. Paired associates.