Laboratory of Brain Imaging, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of Polish Academy of Sciences, 3 Pasteur Street, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland.
Laboratory of Brain Imaging, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of Polish Academy of Sciences, 3 Pasteur Street, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland.
Conscious Cogn. 2022 Apr;100:103315. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2022.103315. Epub 2022 Mar 24.
To what extent the semantic relations present in scenes guide spatial attention automatically remains a matter of debate. Considering that spatial attention can be understood as a sequence of shifts, engagements, and disengagements, semantic relations might affect each stage of this process differently. Therefore, we investigated whether objects that violate semantic rules engage attention for longer than objects that are expected in a given context. The experiment involved a central presentation of a distractor scene that contained a semantically congruent or incongruent object, and a peripheral presentation of a small target letter. We found that incongruent scenes did not delay responses to the peripheral target, which indicates that they did not hold attention for longer than congruent scenes. Therefore, by showing that violations of semantic relations do not engage attention automatically, our study contributes to a better understanding of how attention operates in naturalistic settings.
场景中存在的语义关系在多大程度上自动引导空间注意力仍然存在争议。考虑到空间注意力可以被理解为一系列的转移、参与和脱离，语义关系可能会以不同的方式影响这个过程的每个阶段。因此，我们研究了违反语义规则的物体是否比在给定语境中预期的物体吸引注意力的时间更长。该实验涉及在中央呈现一个分心场景，其中包含一个语义一致或不一致的物体，以及在周边呈现一个小目标字母。我们发现，不一致的场景不会延迟对周边目标的反应，这表明它们不会比一致的场景更长时间地吸引注意力。因此，通过表明违反语义关系不会自动吸引注意力，我们的研究有助于更好地理解注意力在自然环境中是如何运作的。
