Kawashima Tomoya, Matsumoto Eriko
Kobe University, 1-2-1 Tsurukabuto, Nada-ku, Kobe 657-8501, Japan; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8471, Japan.
Kobe University, 1-2-1 Tsurukabuto, Nada-ku, Kobe 657-8501, Japan.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2018 Oct;190:85-94. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.07.003. Epub 2018 Jul 20.
Observers can focus their attention on task-relevant items in visual search when they have prior knowledge about the target's properties (i.e., positive cues). However, little is known about how negative cues, which specify the features of task-irrelevant items, can be used to guide attention away from distractors and how their effects differ from those of positive cues. It has been proposed that when a distractor color is cued, people would first select the to-be-ignored items early in search and then inhibit them later. The present study investigated how the effects of positive and negative cues differ throughout the visual search process. The results showed that positive cues sped up the early stage of visual search and that negative cues led to initial selection for inhibition. We further found that visual search with negative cues was more inefficient than that with positive cues even at later stages, suggesting that sustained inhibition is needed throughout the visual search process. Taken together, the results indicate that positive and negative cues have different functions: prior knowledge about target features can weight task-relevant information at early stages of visual search, and negative cues are used more inefficiently even at later stages of visual search.
当观察者对目标属性有先验知识（即积极线索）时，他们能够在视觉搜索中专注于与任务相关的项目。然而，对于那些明确任务无关项目特征的消极线索如何用于引导注意力远离干扰物，以及它们的效果与积极线索有何不同，我们却知之甚少。有人提出，当提示了干扰物颜色时，人们会在搜索早期首先选择要忽略的项目，然后在稍后抑制它们。本研究调查了积极线索和消极线索在整个视觉搜索过程中的效果差异。结果表明，积极线索加快了视觉搜索的早期阶段，消极线索导致了对抑制的初始选择。我们进一步发现，即使在后期，带有消极线索的视觉搜索也比带有积极线索的视觉搜索效率更低，这表明在整个视觉搜索过程中都需要持续抑制。综上所述，结果表明积极线索和消极线索具有不同的功能：关于目标特征的先验知识可以在视觉搜索的早期阶段加重与任务相关的信息，而消极线索即使在视觉搜索的后期使用效率也更低。
