Department of Psychology.
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2022 Oct;48(10):1069-1082. doi: 10.1037/xhp0001034. Epub 2022 Aug 11.
During visual search for objects (e.g., an apple), the surrounding distractor objects may share perceptual (tennis ball), categorical (banana), or both (peach) properties with the target. Previous studies showed that the perceptual similarity between target and distractor objects influences visual search. Here, we tested whether categorical target-distractor similarity also influences visual search, and how this influence depends on perceptual similarity. By orthogonally manipulating categorical and perceptual target-distractor similarity, we could investigate how and when the two similarities interactively affect search performance and neural correlates of spatial attention (N2pc) using electroencephalography (EEG). Behavioral results showed that categorical target-distractor similarity interacted with perceptual target-distractor similarity, such that the effect of categorical similarity was strongest when target and distractor objects were perceptually similar. EEG results showed that perceptual similarity influenced the early part of the N2pc (200-250 ms after stimulus onset), while categorical similarity influenced the later part (250-300 ms). Mirroring the behavioral results, categorical similarity interacted with perceptual similarity during this later time window, with categorical effects only observed for perceptually similar target-distractor pairs. Together, these results provide evidence for hierarchical processing in visual search: categorical properties influence spatial attention only when perceptual properties are insufficient to guide attention to the target. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
在视觉搜索物体（例如苹果）时，周围的干扰物可能与目标物体具有知觉上（如网球）、类别上（如香蕉）或两者兼有的属性（如桃子）。先前的研究表明，目标和干扰物之间的知觉相似性会影响视觉搜索。在这里，我们测试了类别目标-干扰物相似性是否也会影响视觉搜索，以及这种影响如何取决于知觉相似性。通过正交操纵类别和知觉目标-干扰物相似性，我们可以使用脑电图（EEG）研究这两种相似性如何以及何时相互作用影响搜索性能和空间注意的神经相关性（N2pc）。行为结果表明，类别目标-干扰物相似性与知觉目标-干扰物相似性相互作用，使得当目标和干扰物在知觉上相似时，类别相似性的影响最大。脑电图结果表明，知觉相似性影响 N2pc 的早期部分（刺激出现后 200-250 毫秒），而类别相似性影响后期部分（250-300 毫秒）。与行为结果相呼应，在这个后期时间窗口中，类别相似性与知觉相似性相互作用，只有在知觉上相似的目标-干扰物对中才会观察到类别效应。总之，这些结果为视觉搜索中的分层处理提供了证据：只有当知觉特征不足以引导注意到目标时，类别特征才会影响空间注意。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2022 APA，保留所有权利）。
