Serences John, Scolari Miranda, Awh Edward
Department of Cognitive Sciences and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
Vis cogn. 2009;17(4):531-554. doi: 10.1080/13506280802102541.
Robust interference often arises when multiple targets (T1 and T2) are discriminated in rapid succession (the attentional blink or AB). The AB has been observed for a wide range of stimuli, and is often thought to reflect a central capacity limitation in working memory consolidation, attentional engagement, and/or online response selection. However, recent evidence challenges the existence of unitary bottleneck during postperceptual processing. Awh et al. (2004) found no AB interference when a digit target preceded a face target, presumably because these stimuli could be processed by means of separable processing channels. Using a modified AB procedure, recent studies have also demonstrated that speeded response selection of T1 leads to an AB effect for T2 identification, supporting the conclusion that response selection induces the same processing limitations that typically gives rise to an AB. The present research tests this hypothesis by examining the effects of response selection on the identification of faces. Although we replicated previous demonstrations that online response selection of a digit disrupts the identification of T2 letters, we found no interference in the identification of T2 faces. However, robust AB interference was once again observed when a speeded response to a T1 face was required, confirming that faces are not simply immune to central interference. These results dispute the existence of a unitary postperceptual capacity limitation that gives rise to the AB.
当多个目标（T1和T2）被快速连续区分时（注意瞬脱或AB），常常会出现强烈的干扰。在多种刺激中都观察到了注意瞬脱现象，人们通常认为它反映了工作记忆巩固、注意参与和/或在线反应选择方面的中枢容量限制。然而，最近的证据对知觉后加工过程中单一瓶颈的存在提出了质疑。阿赫等人（2004年）发现，当数字目标先于面部目标出现时，不存在注意瞬脱干扰，推测是因为这些刺激可以通过可分离的加工通道进行处理。利用改进的注意瞬脱程序，最近的研究还表明，对T1的快速反应选择会导致对T2识别的注意瞬脱效应，支持了反应选择会引发通常导致注意瞬脱的相同加工限制这一结论。本研究通过考察反应选择对面部识别的影响来检验这一假设。尽管我们重复了之前的实验结果，即对数字的在线反应选择会干扰T2字母的识别，但我们发现对T2面部的识别没有干扰。然而，当要求对T1面部做出快速反应时，再次观察到了强烈的注意瞬脱干扰，这证实了面部并非完全不受中枢干扰的影响。这些结果对导致注意瞬脱的单一知觉后容量限制的存在提出了质疑。
