School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, AB24 3FX, UK.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2021 Jul;83(5):1954-1970. doi: 10.3758/s13414-021-02242-z. Epub 2021 Mar 21.
Searching for an object in a complex scene is influenced by high-level factors such as how much the item would be expected in that setting (semantic consistency). There is also evidence that a person gazing at an object directs our attention towards it. However, there has been little previous research that has helped to understand how we integrate top-down cues such as semantic consistency and gaze to direct attention when searching for an object. Also, there are separate lines of evidence to suggest that older adults may be more influenced by semantic factors and less by gaze cues compared to younger counterparts, but this has not been investigated before in an integrated task. In the current study we analysed eye-movements of 34 younger and 30 older adults as they searched for a target object in complex visual scenes. Younger adults were influenced by semantic consistency in their attention to objects, but were more influenced by gaze cues. In contrast, older adults were more guided by semantic consistency in directing their attention, and showed less influence from gaze cues. These age differences in use of high-level cues were apparent early in processing (time to first fixation and probability of immediate fixation) but not in later processing (total time looking at objects and time to make a response). Overall, this pattern of findings indicates that people are influenced by both social cues and prior expectations when processing a complex scene, and the relative importance of these factors depends on age.
在复杂场景中搜索目标会受到高级因素的影响，例如在该环境中搜索到该物品的可能性（语义一致性）。有证据表明，当一个人注视一个物体时，我们的注意力会被引导到该物体上。然而，之前很少有研究能够帮助我们理解如何整合自上而下的线索（如语义一致性和注视）来引导搜索目标时的注意力。此外，还有独立的证据表明，与年轻的同龄人相比，老年人可能更容易受到语义因素的影响，而不太容易受到注视线索的影响，但这在之前的综合任务中尚未得到研究。在目前的研究中，我们分析了 34 名年轻成年人和 30 名年长成年人在搜索复杂视觉场景中的目标物体时的眼动。年轻成年人的注意力会受到语义一致性的影响，但会更多地受到注视线索的影响。相比之下，年长成年人在引导注意力时更容易受到语义一致性的影响，并且受到注视线索的影响较小。这种在使用高级线索方面的年龄差异在早期处理（首次注视时间和立即注视的概率）中明显，但在后期处理（注视物体的总时间和做出反应的时间）中并不明显。总体而言，这种发现模式表明，当处理复杂场景时，人们会受到社会线索和先前预期的影响，这些因素的相对重要性取决于年龄。
