Ercolino Ashley M, Patel Pooja, Bohil Corey, Neider Mark B, Schmidt Joseph
Department of Psychology, University of Central Florida, 4111 Pictor Lane - Psychology Building, Rm 355, Orlando, FL, 32816-1390, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2020 Nov;82(8):3878-3894. doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-02111-1.
Pictorial cues generally produce stronger search performance relative to categorical cues. We asked how universal is the benefit of a pictorial cue? To test this, we trained observers to categorize sinusoidal gratings in which categories were distinguished by spatial frequency or orientation. Next, participants completed a search task in which targets were pictorially and categorically cued. Measures of target and distractor processing that primarily rely on foveal processing showed universal benefits; however, the benefit was larger in the orientation condition. Importantly, an index of the direction of spatial attention (i.e., target guidance) showed that the orientation condition produced a pictorial benefit but the spatial frequency condition did not. Experiment 2 replicated the spatial frequency results and also included conditions that increased the discriminability, lowered the spatial frequencies, or both increased the discriminability and decreased the spatial frequencies of the categories. We found that only categories utilizing lower spatial frequencies produced a pictorial guidance benefit. This demonstrates that pictorial cues do not universally improve search performance above categorical cues; it depends on the features that distinguish the categories. Additionally, the increased discriminability condition improved guidance but failed to produce a pictorial benefit, suggesting an interesting disassociation between the amount of target guidance and the existence of a pictorial benefit. Given that perception is known to progress from low/coarse to high/fine spatial frequencies, this suggests that the pictorial guidance benefit acts on early low-spatial frequency processing only, but foveal object recognition processes utilize both early and late spatial frequency processing.
相对于分类线索，图像线索通常能产生更强的搜索性能。我们探讨了图像线索的优势有多普遍？为了测试这一点，我们训练观察者对正弦光栅进行分类，其中类别通过空间频率或方向来区分。接下来，参与者完成一项搜索任务，其中目标通过图像和分类方式进行提示。主要依赖中央凹处理的目标和干扰项处理指标显示出普遍的优势；然而，在方向条件下优势更大。重要的是，空间注意方向的一个指标（即目标引导）表明，方向条件产生了图像优势，但空间频率条件没有。实验2重复了空间频率的结果，并且还包括了提高可辨别性、降低空间频率，或同时提高可辨别性和降低类别的空间频率的条件。我们发现只有利用较低空间频率的类别产生了图像引导优势。这表明图像线索并不总是能普遍提高搜索性能超过分类线索；这取决于区分类别的特征。此外，提高可辨别性的条件改善了引导，但没有产生图像优势，这表明在目标引导量和图像优势的存在之间存在有趣的分离。鉴于已知感知是从低/粗糙到高/精细空间频率发展的，这表明图像引导优势仅作用于早期的低空间频率处理，但中央凹物体识别过程同时利用早期和晚期的空间频率处理。
