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Context and competition in the capture of visual attention
Competition-based models of visual attention propose that perceptual ambiguity is resolved through inhibition, which is stronger when objects share a greater number of neural receptive fields (RFs). According to this theory, the misallocation of attention to a salient distractor—that is, the capture...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer-Verlag
2011
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3204046/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21739337 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-011-0168-9 |
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author | Hickey, Clayton Theeuwes, Jan |
author_facet | Hickey, Clayton Theeuwes, Jan |
author_sort | Hickey, Clayton |
collection | PubMed |
description | Competition-based models of visual attention propose that perceptual ambiguity is resolved through inhibition, which is stronger when objects share a greater number of neural receptive fields (RFs). According to this theory, the misallocation of attention to a salient distractor—that is, the capture of attention—can be indexed in RF-scaled interference costs. We used this pattern to investigate distractor-related costs in visual search across several manipulations of temporal context. Distractor costs are generally larger under circumstances in which the distractor can be defined by features that have recently characterised the target, suggesting that capture occurs in these trials. However, our results show that search for a target in the presence of a salient distractor also produces RF-scaled costs when the features defining the target and distractor do not vary from trial to trial. Contextual differences in distractor costs appear to reflect something other than capture, perhaps a qualitative difference in the type of attentional mechanism deployed to the distractor. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3204046 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | Springer-Verlag |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-32040462011-11-10 Context and competition in the capture of visual attention Hickey, Clayton Theeuwes, Jan Atten Percept Psychophys Article Competition-based models of visual attention propose that perceptual ambiguity is resolved through inhibition, which is stronger when objects share a greater number of neural receptive fields (RFs). According to this theory, the misallocation of attention to a salient distractor—that is, the capture of attention—can be indexed in RF-scaled interference costs. We used this pattern to investigate distractor-related costs in visual search across several manipulations of temporal context. Distractor costs are generally larger under circumstances in which the distractor can be defined by features that have recently characterised the target, suggesting that capture occurs in these trials. However, our results show that search for a target in the presence of a salient distractor also produces RF-scaled costs when the features defining the target and distractor do not vary from trial to trial. Contextual differences in distractor costs appear to reflect something other than capture, perhaps a qualitative difference in the type of attentional mechanism deployed to the distractor. Springer-Verlag 2011-07-08 2011 /pmc/articles/PMC3204046/ /pubmed/21739337 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-011-0168-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2011 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Article Hickey, Clayton Theeuwes, Jan Context and competition in the capture of visual attention |
title | Context and competition in the capture of visual attention |
title_full | Context and competition in the capture of visual attention |
title_fullStr | Context and competition in the capture of visual attention |
title_full_unstemmed | Context and competition in the capture of visual attention |
title_short | Context and competition in the capture of visual attention |
title_sort | context and competition in the capture of visual attention |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3204046/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21739337 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-011-0168-9 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT hickeyclayton contextandcompetitioninthecaptureofvisualattention AT theeuwesjan contextandcompetitioninthecaptureofvisualattention |