Skiba Rafal M, Snow Jacqueline C
Department of Psychology, Program in Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, 89557, USA.
Program in Integrative Neuroscience, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, 89557, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2016 Nov;78(8):2500-2514. doi: 10.3758/s13414-016-1179-3.
Tools afford specialized actions that are tied closely to object identity. Although there is mounting evidence that functional objects, such as tools, capture visuospatial attention relative to non-tool competitors, this leaves open the question of which part of a tool drives attentional capture. We used a modified version of the Posner cueing task to determine whether attention is oriented towards the head versus the handle of realistic images of common elongated tools. We compared cueing effects for tools with control stimuli that consisted of images of fruit and vegetables of comparable elongation to the tools. Critically, our displays controlled for lower-level influences on attention that can arise from global shape asymmetries in the image cues. Observers were faster to detect low-contrast targets positioned near the head end versus the handle of tools. As expected, no lateralized performance bias was observed for the control stimuli. In a follow-up experiment, we confirmed that the bias towards tool heads was not due to inhibition of return as a result of early attentional orienting towards tool handles. Finally, we confirmed that real-world exemplars of the tools in the cueing studies were associated more strongly with specific grasping patterns than the elongated fruits and vegetables. Together, our results demonstrate that affordance effects on attentional capture are driven by the head end of a tool. Prioritizing the head end of a tool is adaptive because it ensures that the most relevant region of the object takes priority in selecting an effective motor plan.
工具提供与物体身份紧密相关的特定动作。尽管越来越多的证据表明，诸如工具之类的功能性物体相对于非工具类物体更能吸引视觉空间注意力，但这仍未解决工具的哪一部分驱动注意力捕捉的问题。我们使用了波斯纳线索任务的一个修改版本，来确定注意力是否会指向常见细长工具真实图像的头部与手柄。我们将工具的线索效应与由与工具具有可比长度的水果和蔬菜图像组成的对照刺激进行了比较。至关重要的是，我们的显示控制了图像线索中全局形状不对称可能产生的对注意力的低层次影响。观察者检测位于工具头部附近而非手柄附近的低对比度目标时速度更快。正如预期的那样，对照刺激未观察到侧向化的表现偏差。在后续实验中，我们证实了对工具头部的偏向并非由于早期注意力指向工具手柄而导致的返回抑制。最后，我们证实了线索研究中工具的现实世界示例与特定抓握模式的关联比细长的水果和蔬菜更强。总之，我们的结果表明，对注意力捕捉的可供性效应是由工具的头部驱动的。优先考虑工具的头部是适应性的，因为它确保了物体最相关的区域在选择有效的运动计划时具有优先权。
