Feature guidance by negative attentional templates depends on search difficulty
Feature guidance by negative attentional templates depends on search difficulty
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DOI：
10.1080/13506285.2019.1581316
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发表时间：
2019-04-21
期刊：
影响因子：
2
通讯作者：
Toellner, Thomas
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Conci, Markus;Deichsel, Cassandra;Toellner, Thomas
关于即将到来的目标的先验知识可以使注意力产生偏差，并促进视觉搜索性能。然而，关于干扰物的知识是否同样可以增强搜索，使注意力偏离要避免的项目，还不太清楚。在这里，我们调查是否利用这种注意模板的搜索难度的影响。从两个实验的结果显示，搜索效率可靠地增加时，积极的线索提供有关即将到来的目标（相对于中性，基线线索）的信息，无论搜索是容易的（低目标非目标相似性）或困难（高目标非目标相似性）。相比之下，消极的线索，告知一个要避免分心被发现，以促进性能只有在困难（但不容易）的搜索，也就是说，当反应相对较慢。这表明，相反，积极的目标模板，负分心模板可以有效地使用只有当搜索任务是困难的，这提供了足够的时间分心抑制的过程来操作。
Prior knowledge about an upcoming target can bias attention and facilitate visual search performance. However, whether knowledge about distractors can likewise enhance search, biasing attention away from to-be-avoided items, is less clear. Here, we investigated whether the utilization of such attentional templates is affected by search difficulty. Results from two experiments revealed search efficiency to be reliably increased when positive cues provide information about the upcoming target (relative to neutral, baseline cues) irrespective of whether search was easy (low target-nontarget similarity) or difficult (high target-nontarget similarity). By contrast, negative cues that inform about a to-be-avoided distractor were found to facilitate performance only during difficult (but not easy) search, that is, when responses were relatively slow. This suggests that, contrary to positive target templates, negative distractor templates can be used effectively only when the search task is difficult, which provides sufficient time for processes of distractor inhibition to operate.