Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2021 Oct;83(7):2822-2842. doi: 10.3758/s13414-021-02354-6. Epub 2021 Aug 25.
Attention is dynamic, constantly shifting between different locations - sometimes imperfectly. How do goal-driven expectations impact dynamic spatial attention? A previous study (Dowd & Golomb, Psychological Science, 30(3), 343-361, 2019) explored object-feature binding when covert attention needed to be either maintained at a single location or shifted from one location to another. In addition to revealing feature-binding errors during dynamic shifts of attention, this study unexpectedly found that participants sometimes made correlated errors on trials when they did not have to shift attention, mistakenly reporting the features and location of an object at a different location. The authors posited that these errors represent "spatial lapses" attention, which are perhaps driven by the implicit sampling of other locations in anticipation of having to shift attention. To investigate whether these spatial lapses are indeed anticipatory, we conducted a series of four experiments. We first replicated in Psychological Science, 30(3), the original finding of spatial lapses, and then showed that these spatial lapses were not observed in contexts where participants are not expecting to have to shift attention. We then tested contexts where the direction of attentional shifts was spatially predictable, and found that participants lapse preferentially to more likely shift locations. Finally, we found that spatial lapses do not seem to be driven by explicit knowledge of likely shift locations. Combined, these results suggest that spatial lapses of attention are induced by the implicit anticipation of making an attentional shift, providing further insight into the interplay between implicit expectations, dynamic spatial attention, and visual perception.
注意力是动态的，会在不同位置之间不断转移——有时并不完美。目标驱动的期望如何影响动态空间注意力？先前的一项研究（Dowd & Golomb，《心理科学》，30(3)，343-361，2019）探讨了在需要将注意力保持在单一位置或从一个位置转移到另一个位置时的目标特征绑定。除了在注意力的动态转移中揭示特征绑定错误外，这项研究出人意料地发现，参与者有时在不需要转移注意力的试验中也会犯相关错误，错误地报告了不同位置的物体特征和位置。作者认为这些错误代表了“空间失误”注意力，这可能是由于对必须转移注意力的其他位置的隐含采样所驱动的。为了研究这些空间失误是否确实是预期的，我们进行了一系列四项实验。我们首先在《心理科学》，30(3)中复制了原始的空间失误发现，然后表明在参与者不期望必须转移注意力的情况下不会观察到这些空间失误。然后，我们测试了注意力转移方向在空间上可预测的情境，发现参与者更倾向于失误到更有可能转移的位置。最后，我们发现空间失误似乎不是由对可能转移位置的明确知识驱动的。综上所述，这些结果表明，注意力的空间失误是由对进行注意力转移的隐含期望引起的，这为隐含期望、动态空间注意力和视觉感知之间的相互作用提供了进一步的见解。
