Department Cognitive Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2012;7(7):e39137. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0039137. Epub 2012 Jul 10.
Visual search is markedly improved when a target color change is synchronized with a spatially non-informative auditory signal. This "pip and pop" effect is an automatic process as even a distractor captures attention when accompanied by a tone. Previous studies investigating visual attention have indicated that automatic capture is susceptible to the size of the attentional window. The present study investigated whether the pip and pop effect is modulated by the extent to which participants divide their attention across the visual field We show that participants were better in detecting a synchronized audiovisual event when they divided their attention across the visual field relative to a condition in which they focused their attention. We argue that audiovisual capture is reduced under focused conditions relative to distributed settings.
当目标颜色变化与空间上无信息的听觉信号同步时，视觉搜索会显著改善。这种“pip and pop”效应是一个自动的过程，即使是一个干扰项，当它伴随着一个音调时，也会吸引注意力。之前研究视觉注意力的研究表明，自动捕获易受注意力窗口大小的影响。本研究探讨了“pip and pop”效应是否会受到参与者在视野中分散注意力程度的调节。我们表明，当参与者在视野中分散注意力时，相对于集中注意力的条件，他们在检测同步的视听事件时表现更好。我们认为，相对于集中的情况，在分散的设置下，视听捕获会减少。
