Born Sabine, Jordan Damien, Kerzel Dirk
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2020 Jul;82(5):2302-2314. doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-01983-7.
Even in sparse visual environments, observers may not be able to report features of objects they have just encountered in a surprise question. Attribute amnesia and seeing without knowing describe report failures for irrelevant features of objects that have been processed to some extent in the primary task. Both phenomena are attributed to the exclusive selection of relevant information for memory consolidation or for awareness, respectively. While attribute amnesia was found even for irrelevant attributes of the target in the primary task, seeing without knowing was not observed when a single object was presented foveally. To elucidate this discrepancy, we examined report failures for irrelevant attributes of single target objects, which were presented either in the fovea or in the periphery, and either at cued or uncued locations. On a surprise trial, observers were able to report the irrelevant shape and color of the target object when it was presented foveally. However, presenting the same object just slightly away from the fovea led to report failures for shape. Introducing a valid peripheral cue prior to target presentation reduced report failures for shape when the cue was predictive of the target location, suggesting that the pre-allocation of endogenous spatial attention promoted the processing of irrelevant shape information. In accordance with previous research, we suggest that these modulations are due to differences in late selection for conscious awareness or consolidation in working memory.
即使在视觉信息稀疏的环境中，观察者在被突然提问时，可能也无法报告他们刚刚看到的物体的特征。属性遗忘和视而不知描述了在主要任务中已对物体的无关特征进行了一定程度处理后的报告失败情况。这两种现象分别归因于在记忆巩固或意识方面对相关信息的选择性关注。虽然在主要任务中，即使是目标的无关属性也会出现属性遗忘，但当在中央凹呈现单个物体时，并未观察到视而不知的现象。为了阐明这种差异，我们研究了单个目标物体无关属性的报告失败情况，这些物体分别在中央凹或外周呈现，且呈现位置为线索提示或非线索提示。在一次突然测试中，当目标物体在中央凹呈现时，观察者能够报告其无关的形状和颜色。然而，将同一物体稍微偏离中央凹呈现时，就会导致形状报告失败。在目标呈现之前引入有效的外周线索，当该线索能预测目标位置时，可减少形状报告失败的情况，这表明内源性空间注意力的预先分配促进了无关形状信息的处理。与先前的研究一致，我们认为这些调节是由于在意识觉知或工作记忆巩固的后期选择上存在差异所致。
