Breska Assaf, Israel Moran, Maoz Keren, Cohen Asher, Ben-Shakhar Gershon
Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2011 Aug;73(6):1754-67. doi: 10.3758/s13414-011-0134-6.
It has been suggested that personally significant (PS) information interferes with performance only when presented within the focus of attention. However, this claim was never tested by a systematic manipulation of attention, but only by using correlative measures of its locus. We addressed this issue in two experiments, utilizing a cued visual search paradigm that allowed us to directly manipulate attention and to measure behavioral and physiological responses. One of the stimuli in the search display had a higher luminance value (i.e., was cued), and, orthogonally, one of the stimuli could be a PS or neutral name. When the cue did not predict target location, PS distractors mildly interfered with task performance, regardless of the cue's location. However, when the cue predicted target location, responses were facilitated for cued targets, indicating that attention was shifted to the cue. Importantly, PS distractors interfered with task performance and elicited enhanced orienting responses only when they were cued. This implies that PS information affects performance only when presented within but not outside the focus of attention.
有人认为，只有当具有个人重要意义（PS）的信息出现在注意力焦点范围内时，才会干扰表现。然而，这一说法从未通过对注意力的系统操纵进行测试，而只是通过使用其位置的相关测量方法。我们在两个实验中解决了这个问题，采用了线索化视觉搜索范式，使我们能够直接操纵注意力并测量行为和生理反应。搜索显示中的一个刺激具有更高的亮度值（即被线索化），并且，正交地，其中一个刺激可以是具有个人重要意义的或中性的名字。当线索不能预测目标位置时，具有个人重要意义的干扰物会轻微干扰任务表现，无论线索的位置如何。然而，当线索预测目标位置时，线索化目标的反应会得到促进，这表明注意力转移到了线索上。重要的是，具有个人重要意义的干扰物只有在被线索化时才会干扰任务表现并引发增强的定向反应。这意味着具有个人重要意义的信息只有出现在注意力焦点范围内而非范围外时才会影响表现。
