注意（attention）和视觉工作记忆（visual working memory，VWM）是对个体在日常生活中进行信息的加工、操作、提取具有非常重要作用的两个认知过程，良好运转的注意过程使人们得以高效地提取并加工信息，将认知资源精准地投放到任务需要的目标上去，而工作记忆渗透在我们日常的诸多复杂的认知活动中，我们的工作学习都需要工作记忆在其中发挥作用，因此研究工作记忆与注意的神经机制具有非常重要的理论与现实意义。一般认为注意会在工作记忆形成的早期影响信息的摄取与编码，其中主要体现在对于目标信息的注意投放和对于无关干扰信息的抑制这两方面的影响上，能否准确高效地进行信息加工明显地影响到了工作记忆的表现。这两个非常重要的认知过程之间存在着紧密的联系，已经有研究发现注意的干扰抑制能力可预测成年个体的视觉工作记忆表现，而同时也有大量的研究发现，工作记忆中存储的信息会影响到当下的注意过程，两者间的联系非常紧密而且对于高级认知加工活动都十分重要，但是目前对于这两者间的相互作用的探究仍十分有限，尤其是缺乏儿童的研究数据。本项研究基于以往的工作记忆以及视觉注意研究结果，进一步结合了行为与脑电研究的实验手段，探索了正常成年人、正常发育儿童，以及患有注意缺陷多动障碍（attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, ADHD）儿童视觉注意过程与其视觉工作记忆之间的联系。本研究主要包括两个实验，实验一为多个行为实验集成，采集了个体在多项认知活动中的测查成绩，研究结果表明，对于正常儿童来讲，他们在视觉工作记忆与注意任务中的表现与他们高级阅读理解能力息息相关，在视觉工作记忆任务与注意任务中表现得更好的正常儿童也具有更优异的阅读流畅性任务表现，虽然ADHD儿童在阅读、工作记忆等任务上的表现整体明显差于正常儿童，但是在视觉工作记忆任务中表现得更好的ADHD儿童也具有更优异的阅读流畅性任务表现，这说明了视觉工作记忆与注意对于高级认知功能的重要性；实验二是脑电实验，研究中我们收集了三组人群的脑电数据：9–15岁的ADHD儿童（n = 31）、正常儿童（n =24）和19-26岁正常成年人（n = 24）在完成经典的视觉搜索任务时的EEG数据，被试需要按键判断在一圈视觉刺激中具有特殊形状信息的目标物出现在视野的上半部分还是下半部分，同时需要抑制住来自具有明显颜色特征的分心物的干扰。在视觉搜索任务中，主要包括分心物出现在偏侧-目标物出现在中央视野，以及目标物出现在偏侧-分心物出现在中央视野两种实验条件，我们通过分析事件相关电位（Event-related potentials, ERPs）来探究被试的干扰抑制能力（分心物位于偏侧视野，目标物位于中央视野）和注意投放能力（目标物位于偏侧视野，分心物位于目标视野），主要参考的ERP标记为P_D成分和N2pc成分。实验结果显示，在“目标物位于中线-干扰位于偏侧”的情况下，正常成年人被试被诱发出了明显的N2pc成分，之后紧跟着一个明显的P_D成分，P_D成分正向预测了成年人被试在工作记忆行为任务中的表现，与此同时我们发现两组儿童在该条件下也诱发出了非常明显的P_D成分，时间窗相较成年人更晚，但是同样可以预测儿童在工作记忆任务上的表现;在“目标物位于偏侧-干扰物位于视野中线”的情况下，正常成人被试被诱发出了非常明显的N2pc成分，并且该成分也可以正向预测他们行为视觉工作记忆中的表现，两组儿童没有在该条件下诱发出显著的N2pc成分，相反都被诱发出了很明显的P_D成分，该成分的出现可能表明儿童在该实验条件下采取了与成人不同的整体抑制的注意调控机制。本项研究的两个实验结合行为和生理指标进一步探究了注意与工作记忆间的联系，首次从发育的角度，从行为和脑电EEG层面探究了儿童抑制干扰能力与其工作记忆表现间的关联，在正常儿童与ADHD儿童身上均发现了他们抑制干扰的能力可以正向预测他们在视觉工作记忆中的表现。两项研究中发现的这些生理行为关联对于我们理解儿童个体的注意与记忆的发展机制，以及注意缺陷障碍儿童的神经机制都具有非常重要的启示意义。

Attention and visual working memory (VWM) are two vital cognitive processes that play a very important role in our daily life, especially when people deal with the the information processing, operation, and extraction. A well-functioning attention process allows people to extract and process information in an efficient way and accurately allocate attention resources to the taget set by the task, and visual working memory is crucial in amounts of human cognitive activities, both of our work and learning need it to play a role in. That’s why studying the neural mechanism and correlation of working memory and attention is of extraordinary significance in theoretical and practical aspects. It is generally supposed that attention will affect the information encoding and processing in the very early stage of working memory, which is mainly reflected in the attentional selection on target information, and the attentional suppression on the interference information. It is quite obvious that whether information processing can be performed accurately and efficiently affects people’s working memory performance. Studies have found that the ability to suppress task-irrelevent distractors can predict adults’ visual working memory performance. In the meanwhile, a large number of studies have found that the working memory contents would affect the current attention process. Although the relationship between that two cognitive processes is very tight and important, very little was known about the precise mechanism responsible for their interaction. To find out, we recorded neurophysiological activity associated with attentional selection and attentional suppression during a visual search task, and some other cognitive behavioural activities associated with visual working memory and reading in adults/typically developing children and ADHD children. This thesis mainly includes two studies. The first study is composed of several cognitive behavioural tasks, which collected participants’ behavioural data in working memory/reading and attention. The research results showed that visual working memory and attention did have a very important effect on the reading performance of children, for the TD children, their performance of visual working memory task and attention task could independently predict their performance in the reading fluency task.As for the ADHD children, although we found a worse performance of them in both working memory and reading fluency task compared to TD children ,which was consistent with the previous researches, ADHD children with a more-than-average working memory K score also had a similar significant positive correlation between visual working memory and reading like TD children,which meant their higher K score in working memory indicated a higher score in reading fluency task, we didn’t find a similar result in ADHD children low K score(below the average) .Which illustrated the importance of visual working memory and attention. In the second study, we collected EEG data of 31 ADHD children (9–15 years old ), 24 TD children (9–15 years old) and 24 normal adults (19-26 years old) when they performing a classic visual search task, in which they need to press the button to judge the target with specific shape in a circle of visual stimulations appearing in the upper or lower half of the field of view, in the meanwhile they had to suppress the interference from distractors with salient color. The visual search task included two experimental conditions: distractor appearing in the lateral side- target appearing in the central visual field, and target object appearing in the lateral side-distractor appearing in the central visual field. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were calculated to indicate the participants’ ability to suppress interference from distractors (implied by P_D component), and ability to allocate attention to targets (implied by N2pc component). The results of the second study showed that when the distractor appeared in the lateral, adults were evoked with an obvious P_D, which had a significant positive correlation with their working memory K score. We also found similar results in both TD and ADHD children, they were also evoked with an obvious P_D component (later than adults) which could predict their visual working memory performance .When the target appeared in the lateral, adults were evoked with a very significant N2pc component,which had a marginally significant positive correlation with their working memory K score, however, we didn’t find similar results in two children groups, actually children seemed to carry out a whole-suppression attention control in that condition,they were evoked with a huge and lasting P_D in that experimental condition (almost from 350 to 550 ms after the onset of stimulus) . These results demonstrate that for both TD and ADHD children, their individual differences in visual working memory capacity were associated with their active attentional suppression of salient but irrelevant distractors. These results found in the two studies have very important implications for us to understand the developmental mechanism of individual attention and visual working memory of children, and especially are conducive to the researchs on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.