Working Memory Capacity Affects the Interference Control Of

1 It is important to understand the role of individual differences in working memory capacity 2 (WMC). We investigated the relation between differences in WMC and N1 in event-related 3 brain potentials as a measure of early selective attention for an auditory distractor in 4 three-stimulus oddball tasks that required minimum memory. A high-WMC group (n = 13) 5 showed a smaller N1 in response to a distractor and target than did a low-WMC group (n = 13) 6 in the novel condition with high distraction. However, in the simple condition with low 7 distraction, there was no difference in N1 between the groups. For all participants (n = 52), the 8 correlation between the scores for WMC and N1 peak amplitude was strong for distractors in 9 the novel condition, whereas there was no relation in the simple condition. These results suggest 10 that WMC can predict the interference control for a salient distractor at auditory gating even 11 during a selective attention task. 12 13