Lamy Dominique, Zivony Alon
Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Vision Res. 2018 Aug;149:131-138. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2018.03.009. Epub 2018 Apr 30.
Visual search is faster when the target and distractors features repeat than when they switch on successive trials, a phenomenon known as priming of pop-out (PoP). In previous work, we suggested that two mechanisms, each indexed by a repetition benefit and a switch cost underlie PoP: target activation and distractor inhibition. Consistent with this account, we reported strong correlations between the benefit and cost indexing each mechanism and concluded that there are stable individual differences on target-activation and distractor-inhibition processes. In subsequent work, we noted flaws in our baseline for benefits and costs and suggested a different baseline. Yet, we did not explore the implications of these flaws for our previous conclusions - a gap that Dent (this issue) filled in a large-scale replication of our study. He found our reported correlations to entirely vanish when the corrected baselines are used, whereas repetition benefits were correlated and so were switching costs. He concluded that his findings invalidate the activation-inhibition account of PoP and proposed a hybrid account, according to which repetition effects reflect activation and inhibition, whereas switch costs index a conflict-resolution process. Here, we claim that failure to observe correlations between indices of the same components invalidates the claim that there are stable individual differences on these components but does not challenge the idea that target-activation and distractor inhibition underlie PoP. We reanalyzed the data from four published experiments. As Dent (this issue), we find no correlations between indices of the same component. However, we show that novel predictions of the activation-inhibition components account are supported, whereas the predictions of the conflict-resolution account are disconfirmed.
当目标和干扰项的特征重复时，视觉搜索比在连续试验中它们发生变化时更快，这一现象被称为弹出式启动（PoP）。在之前的研究中，我们提出了两种机制，每种机制都由重复获益和切换成本来衡量，它们是PoP的基础：目标激活和干扰项抑制。与这一观点一致，我们报告了衡量每种机制的获益和成本之间存在很强的相关性，并得出结论，在目标激活和干扰项抑制过程中存在稳定的个体差异。在后续研究中，我们注意到我们在获益和成本基线方面存在缺陷，并提出了一种不同的基线。然而，我们没有探讨这些缺陷对我们之前结论的影响——登特（本期）在对我们研究的大规模重复中填补了这一空白。他发现，当使用校正后的基线时，我们报告的相关性完全消失，而重复获益之间是相关的，切换成本之间也是相关的。他得出结论，他的发现使PoP的激活-抑制观点无效，并提出了一种混合观点，根据这种观点，重复效应反映激活和抑制，而切换成本衡量的是一个冲突解决过程。在这里，我们认为，未能观察到相同成分指标之间的相关性，使关于这些成分存在稳定个体差异的说法无效，但并不挑战目标激活和干扰项抑制是PoP基础这一观点。我们重新分析了四个已发表实验的数据。与登特（本期）一样，我们发现相同成分的指标之间没有相关性。然而，我们表明，激活-抑制成分观点的新预测得到了支持，而冲突解决观点的预测则被否定。
