Smallwood Jonathan
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.
Can J Exp Psychol. 2013 Mar;67(1):32-40. doi: 10.1037/a0030760.
An absence of coupling between cognition and perception can mean that the mind neglects the careful processing of information relevant to the task at hand and errors can ensue. Given that highly salient perceptual events can automatically capture attention, the current study explored whether the same neglect of task-relevant information was possible for stimuli with high levels of perceptual saliency (e.g., identifiable by colour). In four experiments, participants performed a go/no-go task with a low frequency of no-go events. Across all experiments, response inhibition was more successful for coloured no-go targets than for stimuli that shared the same colour as the go targets. In addition, the response time (reaction time [RT]) for rare, coloured go targets was slower than when the same events were noncolored. Together, these results suggest that in relatively simple go/no-go tasks, highly salient perceptual events capture attention in an automatic fashion. Increased visual salience is argued to be beneficial when associated with no-go targets because it momentarily enforces coupling between attention and perception, disrupting ongoing behaviour at the precise moment when not responding is the correct action to take. These results suggest that although the mind may at times neglect events in the environment, salient perceptual events cannot be ignored in the same way.
认知与感知之间缺乏耦合可能意味着大脑忽视了对手头任务相关信息的仔细处理，进而可能产生错误。鉴于高度显著的感知事件能够自动吸引注意力，当前研究探讨了对于具有高感知显著性的刺激（例如，可通过颜色识别），是否同样会忽视与任务相关的信息。在四项实验中，参与者执行了一项“是/否”任务，其中“否”事件的出现频率较低。在所有实验中，对于彩色的“否”目标，反应抑制比对与“是”目标颜色相同的刺激更为成功。此外，对于罕见的彩色“是”目标，反应时间（反应时[RT]）比相同事件为非彩色时更慢。综合来看，这些结果表明，在相对简单的“是/否”任务中，高度显著的感知事件会以自动的方式吸引注意力。当与“否”目标相关联时，视觉显著性的增加被认为是有益的，因为它会瞬间加强注意力与感知之间的耦合，在不做出反应才是正确行动的精确时刻干扰正在进行的行为。这些结果表明，尽管大脑有时可能会忽视环境中的事件，但显著的感知事件却不能以同样的方式被忽视。
