Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2011 Jun;37(3):813-33. doi: 10.1037/a0021440.
In perception, divided attention refers to conditions in which multiple stimuli are relevant to an observer. To measure the effect of divided attention in terms of perceptual capacity, we introduce an extension of the simultaneous-sequential paradigm. The extension makes predictions for fixed-capacity models as well as for unlimited-capacity models. We apply this paradigm to two example tasks, contrast discrimination and word categorization, and find dramatically different effects of divided attention. Contrast discrimination has unlimited capacity, consistent with independent, parallel processing. Word categorization has a nearly fixed capacity, consistent with either serial processing or fixed-capacity, parallel processing. We argue that these measures of perceptual capacity rely on relatively few assumptions compared to most alternative measures.
在感知中，分散注意力是指多个刺激与观察者相关的条件。为了根据感知能力衡量分散注意力的效果，我们引入了一种同时顺序范式的扩展。该扩展为固定容量模型和无限容量模型做出了预测。我们将该范式应用于两个示例任务，对比辨别和单词分类，并发现分散注意力的效果截然不同。对比辨别具有无限容量，与独立的平行处理一致。单词分类具有几乎固定的容量，与串行处理或固定容量的并行处理一致。我们认为，与大多数替代测量方法相比，这些感知能力的测量依赖于相对较少的假设。
