Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN, USA.
Front Psychol. 2013 Jun 19;4:326. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00326. eCollection 2013.
Previous research has investigated whether visual salience (i.e., how much an item stands out) or perceptual load (i.e., display complexity) is the dominant factor in visual selective attention. The evidence has been mixed, with some findings supporting a dominant role for visual salience and some findings supporting a dominant role for perceptual load. However, the complex displays used to impose high perceptual load also introduce a third factor that has gone understudied until recently: the interplay between identity dilution and exposure duration. Adding display items to increase perceptual load dilutes a distractor's identity, which could decrease interference, but the task generally takes longer, which could increase distractor interference. To clarify how these factors interact, the present study used converging measures of distractor interference-both compatibility and singleton presence-to disambiguate effects due to salience, perceptual load, and identity dilution/exposure duration. Compatibility effects support perceptual load as the dominant factor, whereas singleton presence effects do not (Experiment 1). Consistent with salience-based mechanisms, significant distractor processing (both compatibility and presence effects) occurred under high perceptual load when singleton present trials preceded singleton absent trials (Experiment 2A). However, consistent with load-based mechanisms, non-significant compatibility effects occurred under high perceptual load when singleton absent trials preceded singleton present trials (Experiment 2B). Thus, the competition between salience-based and load-based mechanisms depended on the amount of prior experience with singleton present vs. absent displays, which in turn depended on the use of broad vs. narrow attentional allocation strategies. These experience-dependent effects provide further evidence that attention allocation strategies are contingent on factors such as task context and experience.
先前的研究已经探讨了视觉显著性（即物品突出的程度）或知觉负载（即显示复杂性）哪个是视觉选择性注意的主导因素。证据不一，有些研究结果支持视觉显著性起主导作用，有些研究结果支持知觉负载起主导作用。然而，用于施加高知觉负载的复杂显示还引入了一个直到最近才受到研究的第三个因素：身份稀释和暴露持续时间之间的相互作用。添加显示项以增加知觉负载会稀释分心物的身份，从而减少干扰，但任务通常需要更长的时间，这可能会增加分心物的干扰。为了澄清这些因素如何相互作用，本研究使用了分心物干扰的收敛测量方法——兼容性和单一存在——来区分显著性、知觉负载和身份稀释/暴露持续时间的影响。兼容性效应支持知觉负载是主导因素，而单一存在效应则不支持（实验 1）。与基于显著性的机制一致，当单一存在试验在前、单一不存在试验在后时，高知觉负载下会出现显著的分心物处理（兼容性和单一存在效应）（实验 2A）。然而，与基于负载的机制一致，当单一不存在试验在前、单一存在试验在后时，高知觉负载下会出现非显著的兼容性效应（实验 2B）。因此，基于显著性和基于负载的机制之间的竞争取决于对单一存在和单一不存在显示的先前经验量，而这又取决于使用广泛的还是狭窄的注意力分配策略。这些依赖经验的效应进一步证明，注意力分配策略取决于任务上下文和经验等因素。
