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Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Guidance during Inefficient Visual Search

Spotting a prey or a predator is crucial in the natural environment and relies on the ability to extract quickly pertinent visual information. The experimental counterpart of this behavior is visual search (VS) where subjects have to identify a target amongst several distractors. In difficult VS tas...

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Autores principales: Zenon, Alexandre, Ben Hamed, Suliann, Duhamel, Jean-René, Olivier, Etienne
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2008
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2375050/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18493320
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0002219
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author Zenon, Alexandre
Ben Hamed, Suliann
Duhamel, Jean-René
Olivier, Etienne
author_facet Zenon, Alexandre
Ben Hamed, Suliann
Duhamel, Jean-René
Olivier, Etienne
author_sort Zenon, Alexandre
collection PubMed
description Spotting a prey or a predator is crucial in the natural environment and relies on the ability to extract quickly pertinent visual information. The experimental counterpart of this behavior is visual search (VS) where subjects have to identify a target amongst several distractors. In difficult VS tasks, it has been found that the reaction time (RT) is influenced by salience factors, such as the target-distractor similarity, and this finding is usually regarded as evidence for a guidance of attention by preattentive mechanisms. However, the use of RT measurements, a parameter which depends on multiple factors, allows only very indirect inferences about the underlying attentional mechanisms. The purpose of the present study was to determine the influence of salience factors on attentional guidance during VS, by measuring directly attentional allocation. We studied attention allocation by using a dual covert VS task in subjects who had 1) to detect a target amongst different items and 2) to report letters briefly flashed inside those items at different delays. As predicted, we showed that parallel processes guide attention towards the most relevant item by virtue of both goal-directed and stimulus-driven factors, and we demonstrated that this attentional selection is a prerequisite for target detection. In addition, we show that when the target is characterized by two features (conjunction VS), the goal-directed effects of both features are initially combined into a unique salience value, but at a later stage, grouping phenomena interact with the salience computation, and lead to the selection of a whole group of items. These results, in line with Guided Search Theory, show that efficient and rapid preattentive processes guide attention towards the most salient item, allowing to reduce the number of attentional shifts needed to find the target.
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spelling pubmed-23750502008-05-21 Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Guidance during Inefficient Visual Search Zenon, Alexandre Ben Hamed, Suliann Duhamel, Jean-René Olivier, Etienne PLoS One Research Article Spotting a prey or a predator is crucial in the natural environment and relies on the ability to extract quickly pertinent visual information. The experimental counterpart of this behavior is visual search (VS) where subjects have to identify a target amongst several distractors. In difficult VS tasks, it has been found that the reaction time (RT) is influenced by salience factors, such as the target-distractor similarity, and this finding is usually regarded as evidence for a guidance of attention by preattentive mechanisms. However, the use of RT measurements, a parameter which depends on multiple factors, allows only very indirect inferences about the underlying attentional mechanisms. The purpose of the present study was to determine the influence of salience factors on attentional guidance during VS, by measuring directly attentional allocation. We studied attention allocation by using a dual covert VS task in subjects who had 1) to detect a target amongst different items and 2) to report letters briefly flashed inside those items at different delays. As predicted, we showed that parallel processes guide attention towards the most relevant item by virtue of both goal-directed and stimulus-driven factors, and we demonstrated that this attentional selection is a prerequisite for target detection. In addition, we show that when the target is characterized by two features (conjunction VS), the goal-directed effects of both features are initially combined into a unique salience value, but at a later stage, grouping phenomena interact with the salience computation, and lead to the selection of a whole group of items. These results, in line with Guided Search Theory, show that efficient and rapid preattentive processes guide attention towards the most salient item, allowing to reduce the number of attentional shifts needed to find the target. Public Library of Science 2008-05-21 /pmc/articles/PMC2375050/ /pubmed/18493320 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0002219 Text en Zenon et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Zenon, Alexandre
Ben Hamed, Suliann
Duhamel, Jean-René
Olivier, Etienne
Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Guidance during Inefficient Visual Search
title Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Guidance during Inefficient Visual Search
title_full Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Guidance during Inefficient Visual Search
title_fullStr Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Guidance during Inefficient Visual Search
title_full_unstemmed Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Guidance during Inefficient Visual Search
title_short Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Guidance during Inefficient Visual Search
title_sort spatial and temporal dynamics of attentional guidance during inefficient visual search
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2375050/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18493320
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0002219
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