Peterson Mary A, Salvagio Elizabeth
Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
Prog Brain Res. 2009;176:1-13. doi: 10.1016/S0079-6123(09)17601-X.
What are the roles of attention and competition in determining where objects lie in the visual field, a phenomenon known as figure-ground perception? In this chapter, we review evidence that attention and other high-level factors such as familiarity affect figure-ground perception, and we discuss models that implement these effects. Next, we consider the Biased Competition Model of Attention in which attention is used to resolve the competition for neural representation between two nearby stimuli; in this model the response to the stimulus that loses the competition is suppressed. In the remainder of the chapter we discuss recent behavioral evidence that figure-ground perception entails between-object competition in which the response to the shape of the losing competitor is suppressed. We also describe two experiments testing whether more attention is drawn to resolve greater figure-ground competition, as would be expected if the Biased Competition Model of Attention extends to figure-ground perception. In these experiments we find that responses to targets on the location of a losing strong competitor are slowed, consistent with the idea that the location of the losing competitor is suppressed, but responses to targets on the winning competitor are not speeded, which is inconsistent with the hypothesis that attention is used to resolve figure-ground competition. In closing, we discuss evidence that attention can operate by suppression as well as by facilitation.
在确定物体在视野中的位置（即一种被称为图形-背景感知的现象）时，注意力和竞争起到了什么作用？在本章中，我们回顾了相关证据，表明注意力和其他诸如熟悉度等高级因素会影响图形-背景感知，并讨论了实现这些效应的模型。接下来，我们考虑注意力的偏向竞争模型，在该模型中，注意力用于解决两个相邻刺激之间对神经表征的竞争；在这个模型中，对输掉竞争的刺激的反应会受到抑制。在本章的其余部分，我们讨论了最近的行为证据，即图形-背景感知涉及物体间的竞争，其中对输掉竞争的物体形状的反应会受到抑制。我们还描述了两个实验，测试是否如预期的那样，如果注意力的偏向竞争模型扩展到图形-背景感知，那么为解决更大的图形-背景竞争会吸引更多的注意力。在这些实验中，我们发现对位于输掉竞争的强大物体位置上的目标的反应会变慢，这与输掉竞争的物体位置被抑制的观点一致，但对赢得竞争的物体上的目标的反应并没有加快，这与注意力用于解决图形-背景竞争的假设不一致。最后，我们讨论了注意力可以通过抑制以及促进来起作用的证据。
