Stein Timo, Peelen Marius V
Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Trento, Italy.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2017 Apr;79(3):738-752. doi: 10.3758/s13414-017-1279-8.
Humans are remarkably efficient in detecting highly familiar object categories in natural scenes, with evidence suggesting that such object detection can be performed in the (near) absence of attention. Here we systematically explored the influences of both spatial attention and category-based attention on the accuracy of object detection in natural scenes. Manipulating both types of attention additionally allowed for addressing how these factors interact: whether the requirement for spatial attention depends on the extent to which observers are prepared to detect a specific object category-that is, on category-based attention. The results showed that the detection of targets from one category (animals or vehicles) was better than the detection of targets from two categories (animals and vehicles), demonstrating the beneficial effect of category-based attention. This effect did not depend on the semantic congruency of the target object and the background scene, indicating that observers attended to visual features diagnostic of the foreground target objects from the cued category. Importantly, in three experiments the detection of objects in scenes presented in the periphery was significantly impaired when observers simultaneously performed an attentionally demanding task at fixation, showing that spatial attention affects natural scene perception. In all experiments, the effects of category-based attention and spatial attention on object detection performance were additive rather than interactive. Finally, neither spatial nor category-based attention influenced metacognitive ability for object detection performance. These findings demonstrate that efficient object detection in natural scenes is independently facilitated by spatial and category-based attention.
人类在自然场景中检测高度熟悉的物体类别时效率极高，有证据表明，这种物体检测可以在（几乎）不借助注意力的情况下进行。在这里，我们系统地探讨了空间注意力和基于类别的注意力对自然场景中物体检测准确性的影响。对这两种注意力进行操控还能让我们研究这些因素是如何相互作用的：空间注意力的需求是否取决于观察者准备检测特定物体类别的程度，也就是说，取决于基于类别的注意力。结果表明，从一个类别（动物或车辆）中检测目标比从两个类别（动物和车辆）中检测目标更好，这证明了基于类别的注意力的有益效果。这种效果并不取决于目标物体与背景场景的语义一致性，这表明观察者关注的是来自提示类别的前景目标物体的视觉特征。重要的是，在三个实验中，当观察者同时在注视点执行一项需要注意力的任务时，外周呈现场景中的物体检测会显著受损，这表明空间注意力会影响自然场景感知。在所有实验中，基于类别的注意力和空间注意力对物体检测性能的影响是相加的，而非相互作用的。最后，空间注意力和基于类别的注意力都没有影响物体检测性能的元认知能力。这些发现表明，自然场景中的高效物体检测分别受到空间注意力和基于类别的注意力的促进。
