Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance
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The present study investigated whether statistical regularities can influence visual selection. We used the classic additional singleton task in which participants search for a salient shape singleton while ignoring a color distractor singleton. The color distractor singleton was systematically presented more often in 1 location than in all other locations. ⋯ There was a spatial gradient of suppression, as the attentional capture effect and the efficiency of selecting the target scaled with the distance from the high-probability location. Some participants were aware of the statistical regularities, but this did not affect the results whatsoever. We interpret these findings as evidence that spatially statistical regularities that are unknown to the observer can influence attention such that locations that have a high probability of containing a distractor are suppressed relative to all other locations. (PsycINFO Database Record
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J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform · Jan 2018
Links between temporal acuity and multisensory integration across life span.
The temporal relationship between individual pieces of information from the different sensory modalities is one of the stronger cues to integrate such information into a unified perceptual gestalt, conveying numerous perceptual and behavioral advantages. Temporal acuity, however, varies greatly over the life span. It has previously been hypothesized that changes in temporal acuity in both development and healthy aging may thus play a key role in integrative abilities. ⋯ Together, these results suggest that the impact of temporal acuity on multisensory integration varies throughout the life span. Although the maturation of temporal acuity drives the rise of multisensory integrative abilities during development, it is unable to account for changes in integrative abilities in healthy aging. The differential relationships between age, temporal acuity, and multisensory integration suggest an important role for experience in these processes. (PsycINFO Database Record
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J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform · Dec 2017
Contingent capture is weakened in search for multiple features from different dimensions.
Can observers maintain more than 1 attentional set and search for 2 features in parallel? Previous studies that relied on attentional capture by irrelevant distractors to answer this question focused on features from the same dimension and specifically, on color. They showed that 2 separate color templates can guide attention selectively and simultaneously. Here, the authors investigated attentional guidance by 2 features from different dimensions. ⋯ Confronted with previous studies, our findings suggest avenues for future research to determine whether impaired attentional guidance by multiple templates occurs only in cross-dimensional disjunctive search or also in within-dimension search. The present findings also showed that although performance improved when the target feature repeated on successive trials, a relevant-feature cue did not capture attention to a larger extent when its feature matched that of the previous target. These findings suggest that selection history cannot account for contingent capture and affects processes subsequent to target selection. (PsycINFO Database Record
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J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform · Oct 2016
Category-based guidance of spatial attention during visual search for feature conjunctions.
The question whether alphanumerical category is involved in the control of attentional target selection during visual search remains a contentious issue. We tested whether category-based attentional mechanisms would guide the allocation of attention under conditions where targets were defined by a combination of alphanumerical category and a basic visual feature, and search displays could contain both targets and partially matching distractor objects. The N2pc component was used as an electrophysiological marker of attentional object selection in tasks where target objects were defined by a conjunction of color and category (Experiment 1) or shape and category (Experiment 2). ⋯ N2pc components were elicited not only by targets and by color- or shape-matching nontargets, but also by category-matching nontarget objects, even on trials where a target was present in the same display. On these trials, the summed N2pc components to the 2 types of partially matching nontargets were initially equal in size to the target N2pc, suggesting that attention was allocated simultaneously and independently to all objects with target-matching features during the early phase of attentional processing. Results demonstrate that alphanumerical category is a genuine guiding feature that can operate in parallel with color or shape information to control the deployment of attention during visual search. (PsycINFO Database Record
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J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform · Sep 2016
The guidance of spatial attention during visual search for color combinations and color configurations.
Representations of target-defining features (attentional templates) guide the selection of target objects in visual search. We used behavioral and electrophysiological measures to investigate how such search templates control the allocation of attention in search tasks where targets are defined by the combination of 2 colors or by a specific spatial configuration of these colors. Target displays were preceded by spatially uninformative cue displays that contained items in 1 or both target-defining colors. ⋯ Both attracted attention equally when they appeared in a cue display, and both received parallel focal-attentional processing and were encoded into working memory when they were presented in the same target display. Results demonstrate that attention can be guided simultaneously by multiple features from the same dimension, but that these guidance processes have no access to the spatial-configural properties of target objects. They suggest that attentional templates do not represent target objects in an integrated pictorial fashion, but contain separate representations of target-defining features. (PsycINFO Database Record