Albonico Andrea, Malaspina Manuela, Bricolo Emanuela, Martelli Marialuisa, Daini Roberta
Psychology Department, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy; NeuroMI - Milan Center for Neuroscience, Milano, Italy.
Psychology Department, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy; NeuroMI - Milan Center for Neuroscience, Milano, Italy.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2016 Nov;171:85-92. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.10.003. Epub 2016 Oct 12.
Selective attention, i.e. the ability to concentrate one's limited processing resources on one aspect of the environment, is a multifaceted concept that includes different processes like spatial attention and its subcomponents of orienting and focusing. Several studies, indeed, have shown that visual tasks performance is positively influenced not only by attracting attention to the target location (orientation component), but also by the adjustment of the size of the attentional window according to task demands (focal component). Nevertheless, the relative weight of the two components in central and peripheral vision has never been studied. We conducted two experiments to explore whether different components of spatial attention have different effects in central and peripheral vision. In order to do so, participants underwent either a detection (Experiment 1) or a discrimination (Experiment 2) task where different types of cues elicited different components of spatial attention: a red dot, a small square and a big square (an optimal stimulus for the orientation component, an optimal and a sub-optimal stimulus for the focal component respectively). Response times and cue-size effects indicated a stronger effect of the small square or of the dot in different conditions, suggesting the existence of a dissociation in terms of mechanisms between the focal and the orientation components of spatial attention. Specifically, we found that the orientation component was stronger in periphery, while the focal component was noticeable only in central vision and characterized by an exogenous nature.
选择性注意，即把个人有限的加工资源集中于环境某一方面的能力，是一个多层面的概念，它包括不同的过程，如空间注意及其定向和聚焦的子成分。事实上，多项研究表明，视觉任务的表现不仅会受到将注意力吸引到目标位置（定向成分）的积极影响，还会受到根据任务需求调整注意窗口大小（聚焦成分）的积极影响。然而，这两个成分在中央视觉和外周视觉中的相对权重从未被研究过。我们进行了两项实验，以探究空间注意的不同成分在中央视觉和外周视觉中是否具有不同的影响。为了做到这一点，参与者接受了一项检测任务（实验1）或一项辨别任务（实验2），其中不同类型的线索引发了空间注意的不同成分：一个红点、一个小方块和一个大方块（分别是定向成分的最佳刺激、聚焦成分的最佳刺激和次优刺激）。反应时间和线索大小效应表明，在不同条件下，小方块或点的影响更强，这表明空间注意的聚焦成分和定向成分在机制方面存在分离。具体而言，我们发现定向成分在外周更强，而聚焦成分仅在中央视觉中明显，并且具有外源性。
