Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
Cognition. 2020 Aug;201:104312. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104312. Epub 2020 May 5.
Everyday behavior depends upon the operation of concurrent cognitive processes. In visual search, studies that examine memory-attention interactions have indicated that long-term memory facilitates search for a target (e.g., contextual cueing), but the potential for memories to capture attention and decrease search efficiency has not been investigated. To address this gap in the literature, five experiments were conducted to examine whether task-irrelevant encoded objects might capture attention. In each experiment, participants encoded scene-object pairs. Then, in a visual search task, 6-object search displays were presented and participants were told to make a single saccade to targets defined by shape (e.g., diamond among differently colored circles; Experiments 1, 4, and 5) or by color (e.g., blue shape among differently shaped gray objects; Experiments 2 and 3). Sometimes, one of the distractors was from the encoded set, and occasionally the scene that had been paired with that object was presented prior to the search display. Results indicated that eye movements were made, in error, more often to encoded distractors than to baseline distractors, and that this effect was greatest when the corresponding scene was presented prior to search. When capture did occur, participants looked longer at encoded distractors if scenes had been presented, an effect that we attribute to the representational match between a retrieved associate and the identity of the encoded distractor in the search display. In addition, the presence of a scene resulted in slower saccade deployment when participants made first saccades to targets, as instructed. Experiments 4 and 5 suggest that this slowdown may be due to the relatively rare and therefore, surprising, appearance of visual stimulus information prior to search. Collectively, results suggest that information encoded into episodic memory can capture attention, which is consistent with the recent proposal that selection history can guide attentional selection.
日常行为依赖于并发认知过程的运作。在视觉搜索中，研究记忆-注意相互作用的研究表明，长期记忆有助于搜索目标（例如，语境提示），但记忆捕获注意力和降低搜索效率的潜力尚未得到研究。为了解决文献中的这一空白，进行了五项实验来检查非任务相关的编码物体是否可能捕获注意力。在每项实验中，参与者都对场景-物体对进行了编码。然后，在视觉搜索任务中，呈现了 6 个目标搜索显示，参与者被告知通过形状（例如，不同颜色的圆圈中的钻石；实验 1、4 和 5）或颜色（例如，不同形状的灰色物体中的蓝色形状；实验 2 和 3）进行单次扫视到目标。有时，一个分心物来自编码集，并且偶尔会在搜索显示之前呈现与该物体配对的场景。结果表明，错误地将眼动更多地引导至编码分心物，而不是基准分心物，并且当相应的场景在搜索之前呈现时，这种效果最大。当捕获确实发生时，如果呈现了场景，参与者会在编码分心物上花费更长的时间，我们将这种效果归因于检索到的联想与搜索显示中编码分心物的身份之间的代表性匹配。此外，当参与者按照指示首次扫视到目标时，场景的存在会导致扫视部署变慢。实验 4 和 5 表明，这种减速可能是由于在搜索之前出现的视觉刺激信息相对较少且因此令人惊讶。总的来说，结果表明，编入情景记忆的信息可以捕获注意力，这与最近提出的选择历史可以指导注意力选择的观点一致。
