Wang Lihui, Duan Yunyan, Theeuwes Jan, Zhou Xiaolin
Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Department of Cognitive Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
J Vis. 2014 Oct 3;14(12):2. doi: 10.1167/14.12.2.
It is well known that directing attention to a location in space enhances the processing efficiency of stimuli presented at that location. Research has also shown that around this area of enhanced processing, there is an inhibitory region within which processing of information is suppressed. In this study, we investigated whether a reward-associated stimulus can break through the inhibitory surround. A distractor that was previously associated with high or low reward was presented near the target with a variable distance between them. For low-reward distractors, only the distractor very close to the target caused interference to target processing; for high-reward distractors, both near and relatively far distractors caused interference, demonstrating that task-irrelevant reward-associated stimuli can capture attention even when presented within the inhibitory surround.
众所周知，将注意力导向空间中的某个位置会提高在该位置呈现的刺激的处理效率。研究还表明，在这个增强处理的区域周围，存在一个抑制区域，其中信息处理受到抑制。在本研究中，我们调查了与奖励相关的刺激是否能突破抑制性周边区域。将先前与高奖励或低奖励相关的干扰物呈现在目标附近，它们之间的距离可变。对于低奖励干扰物，只有非常靠近目标的干扰物才会对目标处理造成干扰；对于高奖励干扰物，近处和相对远处的干扰物都会造成干扰，这表明与任务无关的奖励相关刺激即使出现在抑制性周边区域内也能吸引注意力。
