Kunar Melina A, Watson Derrick G, Tsetsos Konstantinos, Chater Nick
Department of Psychology, The University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK.
Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg, 20246, Hamburg, Germany.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2017 Aug;79(6):1615-1627. doi: 10.3758/s13414-017-1340-7.
People often have to make decisions based on many pieces of information. Previous work has found that people are able to integrate values presented in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream to make informed judgements on the overall stream value (Tsetsos et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(24), 9659-9664, 2012). It is also well known that attentional mechanisms influence how people process information. However, it is unknown how attentional factors impact value judgements of integrated material. The current study is the first of its kind to investigate whether value judgements are influenced by attentional processes when assimilating information. Experiments 1-3 examined whether the attentional salience of an item within an RSVP stream affected judgements of overall stream value. The results showed that the presence of an irrelevant high or low value salient item biased people to judge the stream as having a higher or lower overall mean value, respectively. Experiments 4-7 directly tested Tsetsos et al.'s (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(24), 9659-9664, 2012) theory examining whether extreme values in an RSVP stream become over-weighted, thereby capturing attention more than other values in the stream. The results showed that the presence of both a high (Experiments 4, 6 and 7) and a low (Experiment 5) value outlier captures attention leading to less accurate report of subsequent items in the stream. Taken together, the results showed that valuations can be influenced by attentional processes, and can lead to less accurate subjective judgements.
人们常常不得不基于许多信息片段来做出决策。先前的研究发现，人们能够整合快速序列视觉呈现（RSVP）流中呈现的值，以便对整体流价值做出明智的判断（Tsetsos等人，《美国国家科学院院刊》，109(24)，9659 - 9664，2012年）。众所周知，注意力机制会影响人们处理信息的方式。然而，注意力因素如何影响整合材料的价值判断尚不清楚。当前的研究是同类研究中的首个，旨在调查在吸收信息时价值判断是否受注意力过程的影响。实验1 - 3检验了RSVP流中一个项目的注意力显著性是否会影响对整体流价值的判断。结果表明，一个无关的高价值或低价值显著项目的存在，会分别使人们倾向于将该流判断为具有更高或更低的整体平均值。实验4 - 7直接检验了Tsetsos等人（《美国国家科学院院刊》，109(24)，9659 - 9664，2012年）的理论，即检验RSVP流中的极值是否会被过度加权，从而比流中的其他值更能吸引注意力。结果表明，一个高价值（实验4、6和7）和一个低价值（实验5）异常值的存在都会吸引注意力，导致对流中后续项目的报告准确性降低。综合来看，结果表明估值会受到注意力过程的影响，并可能导致不太准确的主观判断。
