Han Suk Won
Department of Psychology, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Republic of Korea.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2017 Apr;79(3):726-737. doi: 10.3758/s13414-017-1278-9.
Attention, the mechanism by which a subset of sensory inputs is prioritized over others, operates at multiple processing stages. Specifically, attention enhances weak sensory signal at the perceptual stage, while it serves to select appropriate responses or consolidate sensory representations into short-term memory at the central stage. This study investigated the independence and interaction between perceptual and central attention. To do so, I used a dual-task paradigm, pairing a four-alternative choice task with a visual search task. The results showed that central attention for response selection was engaged in perceptual processing for visual search when the number of search items increased, thereby increasing the demand for serial allocation of focal attention. By contrast, central attention and perceptual attention remained independent as far as the demand for serial shifting of focal attention remained constant; decreasing stimulus contrast or increasing the set size of a parallel search did not evoke the involvement of central attention in visual search. These results suggest that the nature of concurrent visual search process plays a crucial role in the functional interaction between two different types of attention.
注意，即一种使部分感觉输入比其他输入更具优先级的机制，在多个处理阶段发挥作用。具体而言，注意在感知阶段增强微弱的感觉信号，而在中枢阶段它用于选择适当的反应或将感觉表征巩固到短期记忆中。本研究调查了感知注意和中枢注意之间的独立性及相互作用。为此，我采用了一种双任务范式，将一个四选一任务与一个视觉搜索任务配对。结果表明，当搜索项目数量增加时，用于反应选择的中枢注意参与了视觉搜索的感知处理，从而增加了对焦点注意串行分配的需求。相比之下，只要对焦点注意串行转移的需求保持不变，中枢注意和感知注意就保持独立；降低刺激对比度或增加平行搜索的集合大小不会引发中枢注意参与视觉搜索。这些结果表明，并发视觉搜索过程的性质在两种不同类型注意的功能相互作用中起着关键作用。
