Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK.
Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK.
Cognition. 2021 Sep;214:104737. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104737. Epub 2021 Apr 23.
There is growing interest in the visual and attentional processes recruited when human observers view social scenes containing multiple people. Findings from visual search paradigms have helped shape this emerging literature. Previous research has established that, when hidden amongst pairs of individuals facing in the same direction (leftwards or rightwards), pairs of individuals arranged front-to-front are found faster than pairs of individuals arranged back-to-back. Here, we describe a second, closely-related effect with important theoretical implications. When searching for a pair of individuals facing in the same direction (leftwards or rightwards), target dyads are found faster when hidden amongst distractor pairs arranged front-to-front, than when hidden amongst distractor pairs arranged back-to-back. This distractor arrangement effect was also obtained with target and distractor pairs constructed from arrows and types of common objects that cue visuospatial attention. These findings argue against the view that pairs of people arranged front-to-front capture exogenous attention due to a domain-specific orienting mechanism. Rather, it appears that salient direction cues (e.g., gaze direction, body orientation, arrows) hamper systematic search and impede efficient interpretation, when distractor pairs are arranged back-to-back.
人们对人类观察者观看包含多个人物的社交场景时所涉及的视觉和注意力过程越来越感兴趣。视觉搜索范式的研究结果有助于形成这一新兴文献。先前的研究已经确定，当隐藏在一对面向同一方向（向左或向右）的个体之间时，正面相对的个体对比背面相对的个体更容易被找到。在这里，我们描述了第二个密切相关的效应，具有重要的理论意义。当搜索一对面向同一方向（向左或向右）的个体时，隐藏在正面相对的干扰对之间的目标对偶比隐藏在背面相对的干扰对之间的目标对偶更容易被找到。这种干扰对排列效应也在由箭头和提示视空间注意的常见物体类型构成的目标和干扰对中得到了证实。这些发现反对了这样一种观点，即正面相对排列的人由于特定领域的定向机制而吸引外源性注意。相反，当干扰对呈背面相对排列时，明显的方向提示（例如，注视方向、身体方向、箭头）会阻碍系统搜索并阻碍有效解释。
