de Groot Floor, Huettig Falk, Olivers Christian N L
Department of Cognitive Psychology, VU University.
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2016 Feb;42(2):180-96. doi: 10.1037/xhp0000102. Epub 2015 Aug 31.
An important question is, to what extent is visual attention driven by the semantics of individual objects, rather than by their visual appearance? This study investigates the hypothesis that timing is a crucial factor in the occurrence and strength of semantic influences on visual orienting. To assess the dynamics of such influences, the authors presented the target instruction either before or after visual stimulus onset, while eye movements were continuously recorded throughout the search. The results show a substantial but delayed bias in orienting toward semantically related objects compared with visually related objects when target instruction is presented before visual stimulus onset. However, this delay can be completely undone by presenting the visual information before the target instruction (Experiment 1). Moreover, the absence or presence of visual competition does not change the temporal dynamics of the semantic bias (Experiment 2). Visual orienting is thus driven by priority settings that dynamically shift between visual and semantic representations, with each of these types of bias operating largely independently. The findings bridge the divide between the visual attention and the psycholinguistic literature. (PsycINFO Database Record
一个重要的问题是，视觉注意力在多大程度上是由单个物体的语义驱动的，而不是由它们的视觉外观驱动的？本研究调查了这样一个假设，即时间是语义对视觉定向影响的发生和强度的关键因素。为了评估这种影响的动态过程，作者在视觉刺激开始之前或之后呈现目标指令，同时在整个搜索过程中持续记录眼球运动。结果显示，当在视觉刺激开始之前呈现目标指令时，与视觉相关物体相比，对语义相关物体的定向存在显著但延迟的偏差。然而，通过在目标指令之前呈现视觉信息，这种延迟可以完全消除（实验1）。此外，视觉竞争的存在与否并不会改变语义偏差的时间动态（实验2）。因此，视觉定向是由在视觉和语义表征之间动态转换的优先级设置驱动的，这些类型的偏差在很大程度上是独立运作的。这些发现弥合了视觉注意力和心理语言学文献之间的鸿沟。（PsycINFO数据库记录）
