Moriya Jun
Faculty of Sociology, Kansai University, 3-3-35, Yamate-cho, Suita-shi, Osaka, 564-8680, Japan.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2018 Jul;80(5):1127-1142. doi: 10.3758/s13414-018-1520-0.
Visual mental imagery resembles visual working memory (VWM). Because both visual mental imagery and VWM involve the representation and manipulation of visual information, it was hypothesized that they would exert similar effects on visual attention. Several previous studies have demonstrated that working-memory representations guide attention toward a memory-matching task-irrelevant stimulus during visual-search tasks. Therefore, mental imagery may also guide attention toward imagery-matching stimuli. In the present study, five experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of visual mental imagery on visual attention during a visual-search task. Participants were instructed to visualize a color or an object clearly associated with a specific color, after which they were asked to detect a colored target in the visual-search task. Reaction times for target detection were shorter when the color of the target matched the imagined color, and when the color of the target was similar to that strongly associated with the imagined object, than when the color of the target did not match that of the mental representation. This effect was not observed when participants were not instructed to imagine a color. These results suggest that similar to VWM, visual mental imagery guides attention toward imagery-matching stimuli.
视觉心理意象类似于视觉工作记忆（VWM）。由于视觉心理意象和VWM都涉及视觉信息的表征和操作，因此有人推测它们会对视觉注意力产生相似的影响。先前的几项研究表明，在视觉搜索任务中，工作记忆表征会将注意力导向与记忆匹配但与任务无关的刺激。因此，心理意象也可能将注意力导向与意象匹配的刺激。在本研究中，进行了五项实验，以调查视觉心理意象在视觉搜索任务中对视觉注意力的影响。参与者被指示清晰地想象一种颜色或与特定颜色明显相关的物体，之后他们被要求在视觉搜索任务中检测一个彩色目标。当目标颜色与想象颜色匹配时，以及当目标颜色与与想象物体紧密相关的颜色相似时，目标检测的反应时间比目标颜色与心理表征不匹配时更短。当参与者未被指示想象颜色时，未观察到这种效应。这些结果表明，与VWM类似，视觉心理意象会将注意力导向与意象匹配的刺激。
