Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
PLoS One. 2011 Jan 21;6(1):e16276. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016276.
The notion of a saliency-based processing architecture [1] underlying human vision is central to a number of current theories of visual selective attention [e.g., 2]. On this view, focal-attention is guided by an overall-saliency map of the scene, which integrates (sums) signals from pre-attentive sensory feature-contrast computations (e.g., for color, motion, etc.). By linking the Posterior Contralateral Negativity (PCN) component to reaction time (RT) performance, we tested one specific prediction of such salience summation models: expedited shifts of focal-attention to targets with low, as compared to high, target-distracter similarity. For two feature-dimensions (color and orientation), we observed decreasing RTs with increasing target saliency. Importantly, this pattern was systematically mirrored by the timing, as well as amplitude, of the PCN. This pattern demonstrates that visual saliency is a key determinant of the time it takes for focal-attention to be engaged onto the target item, even when it is just a feature singleton.
基于突显的处理架构的概念[1]是人类视觉的核心，也是许多当前视觉选择性注意理论的核心[例如，2]。根据这种观点，焦点注意受场景的整体突显图的引导，该图整合（求和）来自前注意感觉特征对比度计算（例如，颜色、运动等）的信号。通过将后对侧负波（PCN）成分与反应时间（RT）表现联系起来，我们测试了这种突显求和模型的一个具体预测：与高目标-分心物相似性相比，目标-分心物相似性低的焦点注意的转移速度更快。对于两个特征维度（颜色和方向），我们观察到随着目标突显度的增加，RT 会降低。重要的是，PCN 的时间和幅度也系统地反映了这种模式。这种模式表明，即使目标只是一个特征单一体，视觉突显也是焦点注意转移到目标项目所需时间的关键决定因素。
