Inukai Tomoe, Kumada Takatsune, Kawahara Jun-ichiro
Chukyo University, Nagoya, Japan.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2010 May;72(4):939-50. doi: 10.3758/APP.72.4.939.
The identification of a central visual target is impaired by the onset of a peripheral distractor. This impairment is said to occur because attentional focus is diverted to the peripheral distractor. We examined whether distractor offset would enhance or reduce attentional capture by manipulating the duration of the distractor. Observers identified a color singleton among a rapid stream of homogeneous nontargets. Peripheral distractors disappeared 43 or 172 msec after onset (the short- and long-duration conditions, respectively). Identification accuracy was greater in the long-duration condition than in the short-duration condition. The same pattern of results was obtained when participants identified a target of a designated color among heterogeneous nontargets when the color of the distractor was the same as that of the target. These findings suggest that attentional capture consists of stimulus onset and offset, both of which are susceptible to top-down attentional set.
外周干扰物的出现会损害对中央视觉目标的识别。据说这种损害的发生是因为注意力焦点被转移到了外周干扰物上。我们通过操纵干扰物的持续时间来研究干扰物消失是否会增强或减少注意力捕获。观察者在快速呈现的一系列同质非目标物中识别出一个颜色独特的目标。外周干扰物在出现后43毫秒或172毫秒消失（分别为短持续时间条件和长持续时间条件）。长持续时间条件下的识别准确率高于短持续时间条件。当参与者在异质非目标物中识别指定颜色的目标且干扰物颜色与目标颜色相同时，也得到了相同的结果模式。这些发现表明，注意力捕获包括刺激的开始和消失，二者都易受自上而下的注意力设定的影响。
