Ásgeirsson Árni Gunnar, Nieuwenhuis Sander
Department of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Department of Psychology, University of Akureyri, Akureyri, Iceland.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2019 Aug;81(6):1901-1912. doi: 10.3758/s13414-019-01756-x.
A recent theory proposes that arousal amplifies the competition between stimulus representations, strengthening already strong representations and weakening already weak representations in perception and memory. Here, we report a stringent test of this arousal-biased competition theory in the context of visual attention and short-term memory. We examined whether pre-trial arousal enhances the bottom-up attentional bias toward physically salient versus less salient stimuli in a multi-letter identification task. Arousal was manipulated by presenting an arousing versus a neutral picture (Experiment 1) or sound (Experiment 2) at the start of each trial. Bayesian statistics revealed strong evidence for the null hypothesis in both experiments: Arousal did not modulate the effects of physical salience on letter identification. The experiments were repeated with EEG measurements and subjective stimulus ratings, which confirmed that the stimuli successfully manipulated physiological and subjective arousal. These results pose a challenge for the arousal-biased competition theory.
最近有一种理论认为，唤醒会放大刺激表征之间的竞争，在感知和记忆中强化已经强烈的表征，削弱已经微弱的表征。在此，我们报告了在视觉注意力和短期记忆背景下对这种唤醒偏向竞争理论的一项严格测试。我们研究了在多字母识别任务中，试前唤醒是否会增强对物理上显著与不太显著刺激的自下而上的注意力偏向。通过在每次试验开始时呈现一幅激发性图片与一幅中性图片（实验1）或声音（实验2）来操纵唤醒。贝叶斯统计在两个实验中都为零假设提供了有力证据：唤醒并未调节物理显著性对字母识别的影响。我们用脑电图测量和主观刺激评分重复了这些实验，证实了刺激成功地操纵了生理和主观唤醒。这些结果对唤醒偏向竞争理论提出了挑战。
