General and Experimental Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, D-80802 Munich, Germany.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2010 Feb;36(1):38-56. doi: 10.1037/a0017602.
Three experiments investigated whether spatial and nonspatial components of visual attention would be influenced by changes in (healthy, young) subjects' level of alertness and whether such effects on separable components would occur independently of each other. The experiments used a no-cue/alerting-cue design with varying cue-target stimulus onset asynchronies in two different whole-report paradigms based on Bundesen's (1990) theory of visual attention, which permits spatial and nonspatial components of selective attention to be assessed independently. The results revealed the level of alertness to affect both the spatial distribution of attentional weighting and processing speed, but not visual short-term memory capacity, with the effect on processing speed preceding that on the spatial distribution of attentional weighting. This pattern indicates that the level of alertness influences both spatial and nonspatial component mechanisms of visual attention and that these two effects develop independently of each other; moreover, it suggests that intrinsic and phasic alertness effects involve the same processing route, on which spatial and nonspatial mechanisms are mediated by independent processing systems that are activated, due to increased alertness, in temporal succession.
三项实验旨在探讨（健康的年轻）被试警觉水平的变化是否会影响视觉注意的空间和非空间成分，以及这种对可分离成分的影响是否会相互独立。实验采用无线索/警觉线索设计，在两种不同的整体报告范式中，根据 Bundesen（1990）的视觉注意理论，改变线索-目标刺激起始时间间隔，该理论允许独立评估选择性注意的空间和非空间成分。结果表明，警觉水平会影响注意力加权的空间分布和处理速度，但不会影响视觉短期记忆能力，处理速度的影响先于注意力加权的空间分布。这种模式表明，警觉水平会影响视觉注意力的空间和非空间成分机制，这两种效应是相互独立发展的；此外，它表明内在警觉和阶段性警觉效应涉及相同的处理路径，在该路径上，由于警觉性提高，空间和非空间机制通过独立的处理系统得到激活，这些系统按时间顺序依次被激活。
