Schneider Darryl W
Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, 703 Third Street, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2018 May;80(4):913-928. doi: 10.3758/s13414-018-1491-1.
A puzzling interaction involving alertness and cognitive control is indicated by the finding of faster performance but larger congruency effects on alert trials (on which alerting cues are presented before the task stimuli) than on no-alert trials in selective attention tasks. In the present study, the author conducted four experiments to test hypotheses about the interaction. Manipulation of stimulus spacing revealed a difference in congruency effects between alert and no-alert trials for narrowly spaced stimuli but not for widely spaced stimuli, inconsistent with the hypothesis that increased alertness is associated with more diffuse attention. Manipulation of color grouping revealed similar differences in congruency effects between alert and no-alert trials for same-color and different-color groupings of targets and distractors, inconsistent with the general hypothesis that increased alertness is associated with more perceptual grouping. To explain the results, the author proposes that increased alertness is associated specifically with more spatial grouping of stimuli, possibly by modulating the threshold for parsing stimulus displays into distinct objects.
在选择性注意任务中发现，与无警觉试验相比，警觉试验（即在任务刺激之前呈现警觉提示）的表现更快，但一致性效应更大，这表明了一种涉及警觉性和认知控制的令人费解的相互作用。在本研究中，作者进行了四项实验来检验关于这种相互作用的假设。对刺激间距的操纵揭示了，对于间距窄的刺激，警觉试验和无警觉试验的一致性效应存在差异，但对于间距宽的刺激则不存在差异，这与警觉性提高与更分散的注意力相关的假设不一致。对颜色分组的操纵揭示了，对于目标和干扰物的同色和异色分组，警觉试验和无警觉试验的一致性效应也存在类似差异，这与警觉性提高与更多知觉分组相关的一般假设不一致。为了解释这些结果，作者提出，警觉性提高可能特别是通过调节将刺激显示解析为不同对象的阈值，与更多的刺激空间分组相关。
