Yeshurun Yaffa, Montagna Barbara, Carrasco Marisa
Department of Psychology & Institute of Information Processing and Decision Making, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel.
Vision Res. 2008 Jan;48(1):80-95. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2007.10.015.
Previously we have shown that transient attention--the more automatic, stimulus-driven component of spatial attention--enhances spatial resolution. Specifically, transient attention improves texture segmentation at the periphery, where spatial resolution is too low, but impairs performance at central locations, where spatial resolution is already too high for the task. In the present study we investigated whether sustained attention--the more controlled component of spatial attention-can also affect texture segmentation, and if so whether its effect will be similar to that of transient attention. To that end we combined central, symbolic cues with texture displays in which the target appears at several eccentricities. We found that sustained attention can also affect texture segmentation, but unlike transient attention, sustained attention improved performance at all eccentricities. Comparing the effect of pre-cues and post-cues indicated that the benefit brought about by sustained attention is significantly greater than the effect of location uncertainty reduction. These findings indicate that sustained attention is a more flexible mechanism that can optimize performance at all eccentricities in a task where performance is constrained by spatial resolution.
之前我们已经表明，瞬态注意——空间注意中更具自动性、受刺激驱动的成分——会提高空间分辨率。具体而言，瞬态注意改善了外周的纹理分割，在外周空间分辨率过低，但在中央位置会损害表现，在中央位置空间分辨率对于该任务而言已经过高。在本研究中，我们调查了持续性注意——空间注意中更具可控性的成分——是否也会影响纹理分割，如果是，其效果是否会与瞬态注意的效果相似。为此，我们将中央的符号线索与纹理显示相结合，其中目标出现在几个不同的偏心度处。我们发现持续性注意也会影响纹理分割，但与瞬态注意不同，持续性注意在所有偏心度下都提高了表现。比较预线索和后线索的效果表明，持续性注意带来的益处明显大于位置不确定性降低的效果。这些发现表明，持续性注意是一种更灵活的机制，在空间分辨率限制表现的任务中，它可以在所有偏心度下优化表现。
