Tan Jinfeng, Yin Shouhang, Wang Lijun, Chen Antao, Egner Tobias
Key laboratory of Cognition and Personality of the Ministry of Education, Faculty of Psychology, Chongqing Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, Southwest University, Beibei District, Chongqing, 400715, China.
College of Education Science, Hubei Normal University, Huangshi, Hubei, 435000, China.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2018 Nov;80(8):2048-2059. doi: 10.3758/s13414-018-1545-4.
The perceptual load theory of attentional selection argues that the degree to which distractors interfere with target processing is determined by the "perceptual load" (or discrimination difficulty) of target processing: when perceptual load is low, distractors interfere to a greater extent than when it is high. A well-known exception is load-independent interference effects from face distractors during processing of name targets. This finding was reconciled with load theory by proposing distinct processing resources for faces versus names. In the present study, we revisit this effect to test (a) whether increasing the processing overlap (perceptual, lexical, conceptual) between potential targets and distractors would reinstate the classic load effect, and (b) whether this data pattern could be better explained by load theory or by a rival account that argues that distractor dilution rather than target load determines the degree of distractor interference. Over four experiments, we first replicate the original finding and then show that load effects grow with increasing processing overlap between potential targets and distractors. However, by adding dilution conditions, we also show that these processing overlap dependent modulations of distractor interference can be explained by the distractor dilution perspective but not by perceptual load theory. Thus, our findings support a processing overlap dilution account of attentional selection.
注意选择的知觉负载理论认为，干扰项对目标加工的干扰程度取决于目标加工的“知觉负载”（或辨别难度）：当知觉负载较低时，干扰项的干扰程度比知觉负载较高时更大。一个著名的例外是在加工名字目标时，面部干扰项产生的与负载无关的干扰效应。通过提出针对面部和名字的不同加工资源，这一发现与负载理论达成了一致。在本研究中，我们重新审视这一效应，以检验：（a）增加潜在目标与干扰项之间的加工重叠（知觉、词汇、概念方面）是否会恢复经典的负载效应；（b）这一数据模式能否由负载理论或一种与之竞争的观点更好地解释，该竞争观点认为是干扰项稀释而非目标负载决定了干扰项的干扰程度。在四项实验中，我们首先重复了原始发现，然后表明负载效应随着潜在目标与干扰项之间加工重叠的增加而增强。然而，通过增加稀释条件，我们还表明，这些与加工重叠相关的干扰项干扰调节可以用干扰项稀释观点来解释，而不能用知觉负载理论来解释。因此，我们的研究结果支持了一种关于注意选择的加工重叠稀释观点。
