Abrams Jared, Barbot Antoine, Carrasco Marisa
New York University, New York, New York, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2010 Aug;72(6):1510-21. doi: 10.3758/APP.72.6.1510.
Voluntary covert attention selects relevant sensory information for prioritized processing. The behavioral and neural consequences of such selection have been extensively documented, but its phenomenology has received little empirical investigation. Involuntary attention increases perceived spatial frequency (Gobell & Carrasco, 2005), but involuntary attention can differ from voluntary attention in its effects on performance in tasks mediated by spatial resolution (Yeshurun, Montagna, & Carrasco, 2008). Therefore, we ask whether voluntary attention affects the subjective appearance of spatial frequency--a fundamental dimension of visual perception underlying spatial resolution. We used a demanding rapid serial visual presentation task to direct voluntary attention and measured perceived spatial frequency at the attended and unattended locations. Attention increased the perceived spatial frequency of suprathreshold stimuli and also improved performance on a concurrent orientation discrimination task. In the control experiment, we ruled out response bias as an alternative account by using a lengthened interstimulus interval, which allows observers to disengage attention from the cued location. In contrast to the main experiment, the observers showed neither increased perceived spatial frequency nor improved orientation discrimination at the attended location. Thus, this study establishes that voluntary attention increases perceived spatial frequency. This phenomenological consequence links behavioral and neurophysiological studies on the effects of attention.
自愿性隐蔽注意会选择相关的感觉信息以便进行优先处理。这种选择的行为和神经后果已有大量文献记载，但其现象学却很少受到实证研究。非自愿注意会提高感知到的空间频率（戈贝尔和卡拉斯科，2005年），但非自愿注意在对由空间分辨率介导的任务表现的影响方面可能与自愿注意有所不同（耶舒伦、蒙塔纳和卡拉斯科，2008年）。因此，我们要问自愿注意是否会影响空间频率的主观表象——这是空间分辨率背后视觉感知的一个基本维度。我们使用了一项要求较高的快速序列视觉呈现任务来引导自愿注意，并测量了被注意位置和未被注意位置的感知空间频率。注意提高了阈上刺激的感知空间频率，同时也提高了一项并行的方向辨别任务中的表现。在对照实验中，我们通过使用延长的刺激间隔排除了反应偏差这一替代解释，延长的刺激间隔使观察者能够将注意力从提示位置上脱离。与主要实验不同，观察者在被注意位置既没有表现出感知空间频率的增加，也没有表现出方向辨别能力的提高。因此，本研究表明自愿注意会提高感知空间频率。这种现象学后果将关于注意影响的行为研究和神经生理学研究联系了起来。
