Wang Chundi, Hu Luming, Talhelm Thomas, Zhang Xuemin
1 Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
2 Booth School of Business, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2019 Aug;72(8):1903-1912. doi: 10.1177/1747021818817388. Epub 2018 Dec 12.
Surface features can be used during multiple object tracking (MOT). Previous studies suggested that surface features might be stored in visual working memory to assist object tracking, and attentive tracking and visual working memory share common attentional resources. However, it is still unknown whether features of both the target and distractor sets will be stored, or features of the target and distractor sets are processed differently. Moreover, how feature distinctiveness and similarity between the target and distractor sets affect tracking and allocation of attentional resources are still not clear. First, we manipulated the colour complexity of the target set (CT) and the colour complexity of the distractor set (CD), respectively, in two experiments, where colours of the target and distractor sets were always distinct, to test their effects on tracking performance. If features of the target and distractor sets are stored, manipulating feature complexity of the target and distractor sets would significantly affect tracking performance. Second, this study tested whether tracking performance was affected by different levels of distinctiveness between the target and distractor sets (DTD) and explored how distinctiveness affected tracking and allocation of attentional resources. Results showed that DTD and CT significantly affect tracking performance and allocation of attentional resources, but not CD. These results indicated that when targets and distractors have distinct features, only the surface features of the targets are maintained in visual working memory. And when targets have the same colour with the distractors, they are more difficult and consume more attentional resources to track.
表面特征可用于多目标跟踪（MOT）。先前的研究表明，表面特征可能存储在视觉工作记忆中以辅助目标跟踪，并且注意力跟踪和视觉工作记忆共享共同的注意力资源。然而，目标集和干扰项集的特征是否都会被存储，或者目标集和干扰项集的特征是否会被不同地处理，仍然未知。此外，目标集和干扰项集之间的特征独特性和相似性如何影响注意力资源的跟踪和分配仍不清楚。首先，我们在两个实验中分别操纵了目标集的颜色复杂度（CT）和干扰项集的颜色复杂度（CD），其中目标集和干扰项集的颜色始终不同，以测试它们对跟踪性能的影响。如果目标集和干扰项集的特征被存储，操纵目标集和干扰项集的特征复杂度将显著影响跟踪性能。其次，本研究测试了跟踪性能是否受到目标集和干扰项集之间不同程度的独特性（DTD）的影响，并探讨了独特性如何影响注意力资源的跟踪和分配。结果表明，DTD和CT显著影响跟踪性能和注意力资源的分配，但CD没有。这些结果表明，当目标和干扰项具有不同特征时，只有目标的表面特征会保留在视觉工作记忆中。并且当目标与干扰项颜色相同时，则更难跟踪且会消耗更多的注意力资源。
