Lee Jongmin, Han Suk Won
Department of Psychology, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Republic of Korea.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2020 Aug;82(6):2893-2908. doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-02047-6.
It is well known that human information processing comprises several distinct subprocesses-namely, the perceptual, central, and motor stage. In each stage, attention plays an important role. Specifically, a type of attention-perceptual attention-operates to detect and identify a sensory input. Following this, another class of attention-central attention-is involved in working memory encoding and response selection at the central stage. While perceptual attention and central attention are known to be separate, distinct processes, some researchers reported findings that loading central attention postponed the deployment of perceptual attention needed to perform a spatial configuration search. We tested whether a similar pattern of results would emerge when a different kind of search task is used. To do so, we had participants perform a visual-search task of searching for a feature conjunction target, taxing perceptual attention while they are engaged in central processes, such as working memory encoding and response selection. The results showed that perceptual processing of conjunction search stimuli could be carried out concurrently with central processes. These results suggest that the nature of the concurrent visual search process is a determinant responsible for the dynamic relationship between perceptual attention deployed for visual search and central attention needed for working memory encoding and response selection.
众所周知，人类信息处理包括几个不同的子过程，即感知阶段、中枢阶段和运动阶段。在每个阶段，注意力都起着重要作用。具体而言，一种注意力——感知注意力——用于检测和识别感觉输入。在此之后，另一类注意力——中枢注意力——参与中枢阶段的工作记忆编码和反应选择。虽然已知感知注意力和中枢注意力是分开的、不同的过程，但一些研究人员报告的结果表明，加载中枢注意力会推迟执行空间配置搜索所需的感知注意力的部署。我们测试了使用不同类型的搜索任务时是否会出现类似的结果模式。为此，我们让参与者执行一项视觉搜索任务，即搜索特征联结目标，在他们进行中枢过程（如工作记忆编码和反应选择）时对感知注意力进行考验。结果表明，联结搜索刺激的感知处理可以与中枢过程同时进行。这些结果表明，并发视觉搜索过程的性质是决定视觉搜索所部署的感知注意力与工作记忆编码和反应选择所需的中枢注意力之间动态关系的一个因素。
