Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London, WC1E7HX, UK.
School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK.
Sci Rep. 2022 Mar 23;12(1):5059. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-09011-4.
It is well-established that faces and bodies cue observers' visuospatial attention; for example, target items are found faster when their location is cued by the directionality of a task-irrelevant face or body. Previous results suggest that these cueing effects are greatly reduced when the orientation of the task-irrelevant stimulus is inverted. It remains unclear, however, whether sensitivity to orientation is a unique hallmark of "social" attention cueing or a more general phenomenon. In the present study, we sought to determine whether the cueing effects produced by common objects (power drills, desk lamps, desk fans, cameras, bicycles, and cars) are also attenuated by inversion. When cueing stimuli were shown upright, all six object classes produced highly significant cueing effects. When shown upside-down, however, the results were mixed. Some of the cueing effects (e.g., those induced by bicycles and cameras) behaved liked faces and bodies: they were greatly reduced by orientation inversion. However, other cueing effects (e.g., those induced by cars and power drills) were insensitive to orientation: upright and inverted exemplars produced significant cueing effects of comparable strength. We speculate that (i) cueing effects depend on the rapid identification of stimulus directionality, and (ii) some cueing effects are sensitive to orientation because upright exemplars of those categories afford faster processing of directionality, than inverted exemplars. Contrary to the view that attenuation-by-inversion is a unique hallmark of social attention, our findings indicate that some non-social cueing effects also exhibit sensitivity to orientation.
已经证实，面部和身体会提示观察者的视空间注意力；例如，当目标项目的位置被无关的面部或身体的方向性提示时，它们会被更快地找到。之前的结果表明，当无关刺激的方向被反转时，这些提示效应会大大降低。然而，目前尚不清楚对方向的敏感性是“社会”注意提示的独特标志还是更普遍的现象。在本研究中，我们试图确定常见物体（电钻、台灯、台扇、相机、自行车和汽车）产生的提示效应是否也会因倒置而减弱。当提示刺激呈现为直立时，所有六个物体类别都产生了非常显著的提示效应。然而，当呈现为倒置时，结果则是混合的。一些提示效应（例如，由自行车和相机引起的提示效应）类似于面部和身体：它们因方向反转而大大降低。然而，其他提示效应（例如，由汽车和电钻引起的提示效应）对方向不敏感：直立和倒置的范例产生了强度相当的显著提示效应。我们推测（i）提示效应取决于对刺激方向的快速识别，以及（ii）一些提示效应对方向敏感，因为这些类别的直立范例比倒置范例更能快速处理方向。与反转减弱是社会注意力独特标志的观点相反，我们的发现表明，一些非社会提示效应也对方向敏感。
