Conjunction Search Is Relational: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence
Conjunction Search Is Relational: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence
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DOI：
10.1037/xhp0000371
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发表时间：
2017-10-01
影响因子：
2.1
通讯作者：
Choi, Jessica
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Becker, Stefanie I.;Harris, Anthony M.;Choi, Jessica
注意选择与行为相关的刺激进行进一步的能力限制处理，并限制它们进入意识。鉴于注意对意识感知的重要性，确定驱动注意的因素和机制是很重要的。一种普遍的观点是，注意力偏向于连接目标的特定特征值（例如，垂直、红色、中等）。相比之下，本研究的结果表明，注意力被调整到区分连接目标和无关非目标的两个相对特征上（例如，更大和更蓝）。此外，即使在没有任何特征对比的情况下，在目标之前短暂呈现的不相关连接提示也可以自动吸引注意力。重要的是，自动定位到连接线索完全独立于线索和目标之间的物理相似性，而仅仅取决于连接线索是否与目标的相对特征相匹配。这些结果表明，注意定向是由一种能够快速提取特征关系信息并将注意力引导到最符合目标相对属性的刺激上的机制决定的。这些结果很难与现有的特定特征描述或基于对象的注意力描述相一致，并为关联搜索的关系描述辩护。
Attention selects behaviorally relevant stimuli for further capacity-limited processing and gates their access to awareness. Given the importance of attention for conscious perception, it is important to determine the factors and mechanisms that drive attention. A widespread view is that attention is biased to the specific feature values of a conjunction target (e.g., vertical, red, medium). By contrast, the results of the present study show that attention is tuned to the 2 relative features that distinguish a conjunction target from the irrelevant nontargets (e.g., larger and bluer). Moreover, an irrelevant conjunction cue that is briefly presented prior to the target can automatically attract attention, even in the absence of any feature contrasts. Importantly, automatic orienting to the conjunction cue was completely independent of the physical similarity between cue and target, and depended only on whether the conjunction cue matched the relative features of the target. These results demonstrate that attentional orienting is determined by a mechanism that can rapidly extract information about feature relationships and guide attention to the stimulus that best matches the relative attributes of the target. These results are difficult to reconcile with extant feature-specific accounts or object-based accounts of attention and argue for a relational account of conjunction search.