Yamauchi Kenji, Kawahara Jun I
Department of Psychology, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.
Department of Psychology, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2019 Jan;192:200-211. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.11.014. Epub 2018 Dec 8.
Visual marking, which is based on the assumption that previewing some distractors increases the efficiency of subsequent visual searches, constitutes one of the most efficient inhibitions on visual searches. The preview search task consists of a display of a subset of distractors followed by an additional display containing the remaining distractors and a target. During the preview period, an inhibitory template is thought to be formed, resulting in the prioritization of the subsequently presented items and the inhibition of the previewed items. Although the previous studies have mainly examined the determinants that impair the inhibitory templates resulting in inefficient visual searches, the present study examined the possibility that the template could be updated to increase search efficiency. To this end, we used a preview search task and manipulated the presence of a singleton distractor in the display of the additional items. We examined whether the singleton increased the efficiency of the search performance by determining if the inhibitory template would be updated such that participants would treat the singleton as if it had been previewed. The results demonstrated that the response times were faster with the singleton included, suggesting that an inhibitory template for visual marking could be updated and lead to improved search performance.
视觉标记基于这样一种假设，即预览一些干扰项会提高后续视觉搜索的效率，它是对视觉搜索最有效的抑制方式之一。预览搜索任务包括先展示一部分干扰项，随后再展示包含其余干扰项和一个目标的额外展示。在预览阶段，人们认为会形成一个抑制性模板，从而使后续呈现的项目被优先处理，同时抑制已预览的项目。尽管先前的研究主要考察了导致抑制性模板受损进而造成视觉搜索效率低下的决定因素，但本研究考察了模板能否更新以提高搜索效率的可能性。为此，我们使用了预览搜索任务，并在额外项目展示中操控单独呈现的干扰项的存在情况。我们通过确定抑制性模板是否会更新，使得参与者将单独呈现的干扰项视为已被预览的干扰项，来检验单独呈现的干扰项是否提高了搜索表现的效率。结果表明，包含单独呈现的干扰项时反应时间更快，这表明视觉标记的抑制性模板可以更新，并导致搜索表现得到改善。
