Goodhew Stephanie C, Greenwood John A, Edwards Mark
Research School of Psychology, The Australian National University, Building 39, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia.
Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, UK.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2016 May;78(4):1186-202. doi: 10.3758/s13414-016-1073-z.
The visual system is constantly bombarded with dynamic input. In this context, the creation of enduring object representations presents a particular challenge. We used object-substitution masking (OSM) as a tool to probe these processes. In particular, we examined the effect of target-like stimulus repetitions on OSM. In visual crowding, the presentation of a physically identical stimulus to the target reduces crowding and improves target perception, whereas in spatial repetition blindness, the presentation of a stimulus that belongs to the same category (type) as the target impairs perception. Across two experiments, we found an interaction between spatial repetition blindness and OSM, such that repeating a same-type stimulus as the target increased masking magnitude relative to presentation of a different-type stimulus. These results are discussed in the context of the formation of object files. Moreover, the fact that the inducer only had to belong to the same "type" as the target in order to exacerbate masking, without necessarily being physically identical to the target, has important implications for our understanding of OSM per se. That is, our results show the target is processed to a categorical level in OSM despite effective masking and, strikingly, demonstrate that this category-level content directly influences whether or not the target is perceived, not just performance on another task (as in priming).
视觉系统不断受到动态输入的冲击。在这种情况下，创建持久的物体表征提出了一个特殊的挑战。我们使用物体替代掩蔽（OSM）作为工具来探究这些过程。具体而言，我们研究了类似目标的刺激重复对OSM的影响。在视觉拥挤中，向目标呈现物理上相同的刺激会减少拥挤并改善目标感知，而在空间重复盲视中，呈现与目标属于同一类别（类型）的刺激会损害感知。在两个实验中，我们发现空间重复盲视和OSM之间存在相互作用，即相对于呈现不同类型的刺激，重复与目标相同类型的刺激会增加掩蔽程度。这些结果在物体文件形成的背景下进行了讨论。此外，诱导刺激只需与目标属于同一“类型”就能加剧掩蔽，而不必与目标在物理上相同，这一事实对我们理解OSM本身具有重要意义。也就是说，我们的结果表明，尽管存在有效的掩蔽，目标在OSM中仍被处理到类别水平，而且引人注目的是，这一类别水平的内容直接影响目标是否被感知，而不仅仅是另一任务的表现（如启动效应）。
