Dilution, not load, affects distractor processing.

Lavie and Tsal (1994) proposed that spare attentional capacity is allocated involuntarily to the processing of irrelevant stimuli, thereby enabling interference. Under this view, when task demands increase, spare capacity should decrease and distractor interference should decrease. In support, Lavie and Cox (1997) found that increasing perceptual load by increasing search set size decreased interference from an irrelevant distractor.

Prefrontal cortex activity during response inhibition associated with excitement symptoms in schizophrenia.

Previous fMRI studies of schizophrenia have shown a prefrontal abnormality during response inhibition. However, the association with the clinical symptoms in schizophrenia remains unclear. The aim of the present study was to clarify the association of psychotic symptoms with the prefrontal function during response inhibition in patients with schizophrenia.

Structural disruption of the dorsal cingulum bundle is associated with impaired Stroop performance in patients with schizophrenia.

Previous diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies have shown structural abnormalities of the cingulum bundle (CB) in patients with schizophrenia. However, regional specificity and functional relevance of the pregenual and dorsal CB subdivisions has not been fully studied. In the current study, 31 patients with schizophrenia and 65 age- and gender-matched healthy subjects underwent DTI to measure fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) in cross sections of dorsal and pregenual CB tractography.

Practice in visual search produces decreased capacity demands but increased distraction.

Lavie (1995) proposed a load account of selective attention, which holds that spare capacity is involuntarily allocated to the processing of irrelevant stimuli. In support of this account, Lavie and Cox (1997) combined a letter search task with a flanker task and found that increasing load (search set size) resulted in decreased interference from an irrelevant distractor letter. In three experiments using a very similar procedure, we varied distractor location and distractor distinctiveness and observed that as load increased (from set size 2 to set size 6), there was a consistent reduction in interference.