Biggs Adam T, Brockmole James R, Witt Jessica K
Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, B203 LSRC, Box 90999, Durham, NC, 27708-0754, USA,
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2013 Nov;75(8):1715-24. doi: 10.3758/s13414-013-0538-6.
The action-specific perception hypothesis (Witt, Current Directions in Psychological Science 20: 201-206, 2011) claims that the environment is represented with respect to potential interactions for objects present within said environment. This investigation sought to extend the hypothesis beyond perceptual mechanisms and assess whether action-specific potential could alter attentional allocation. To do so, we examined a well-replicated attention bias in the weapon focus effect (Loftus, Loftus, & Messo, Law and Human Behaviour 1, 55-62, 1987), which represents the tendency for observers to attend more to weapons than to neutral objects. Our key manipulation altered the anticipated action-specific potential of observers by providing them a firearm while they freely viewed scenes with and without weapons present. We replicated the original weapon focus effect using modern eye tracking and confirmed that the increase in time looking at weapons comes at a cost of less time spent looking at faces. Additionally, observers who held firearms while viewing the various scenes showed a general bias to look at faces over objects, but only if the firearm was in a readily usable position (i.e., pointed at the scenes rather than holstered at one's side). These two effects, weapon focus and the newly found bias to look more at faces when armed, canceled out one another without interacting. This evidence confirms that the action capabilities of the observer alter more than just perceptual mechanisms and that holding a weapon can change attentional priorities. Theoretical and real-world implications are discussed.
特定动作知觉假说（威特，《心理科学当前发展方向》20: 201 - 206，2011年）声称，环境是根据该环境中存在的物体的潜在相互作用来表征的。本研究试图将该假说扩展到感知机制之外，并评估特定动作潜能是否会改变注意力分配。为此，我们研究了武器聚焦效应（洛夫特斯、洛夫特斯和梅索，《法律与人类行为》1，55 - 62，1987年）中一个反复得到验证的注意力偏差，该效应表现为观察者对武器的关注多于对中性物体的关注。我们的关键操作是在观察者自由观看有武器和无武器场景时，给他们提供一支火器，从而改变他们预期的特定动作潜能。我们使用现代眼动追踪技术重现了原始的武器聚焦效应，并证实看武器时间的增加是以看脸时间的减少为代价的。此外，在观看各种场景时持有火器的观察者总体上表现出更关注脸而非物体的倾向，但前提是火器处于随时可用的位置（即指向场景而非别在身体一侧）。武器聚焦和新发现的武装时更关注脸这两种效应相互抵消，没有产生交互作用。这一证据证实观察者的动作能力不仅会改变感知机制，持有武器还会改变注意力优先级。本文讨论了其理论和现实意义。
