Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, University of Vienna, Liebiggasse 5, 1010, Vienna, Austria.
Austrian Marketing University of Applied Sciences, Vienna, Austria.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2023 May;85(4):985-1011. doi: 10.3758/s13414-022-02648-3. Epub 2023 Jan 24.
Visual attention is influenced by the characteristics of the stimuli (bottom-up), their task relevance (top-down), and prior experience (e.g., selection history and learning). However, it is largely unclear how learning and selection history interact with top-down attentional guidance. We combined trial-and-error learning with a spatial cueing protocol to test whether previously learned target-defining features continued to capture attention if participants were instructed to search for a new target feature (Experiment 1) or had to learn a new target feature (Experiment 2). It turned out that the previously learned feature quickly stopped capturing attention when the target feature changed (Experiment 1; even before participants learned the new target-defining feature, in Experiment 2). Finally, in Experiment 3, in which participants learned to search for targets defined by two redundant features (color and orientation), we found possible reasons for the dominance of the instructed feature over learning. Participants reported using only the target color for their search. Consequently, only cues with a target color captured attention. The unused target orientation only captured attention in participants aware of both target-defining features (13 out of 23) and only if the orientation was presented in the target color. We conclude that knowledge of target-defining features and their use as search criterion is critical for attentional guidance, while previously learned target features either influence attentional guidance only contingent on such deliberately selected top-down based attentional control settings or may influence visual search but not attentional guidance.
视觉注意力受到刺激特征（自下而上）、任务相关性（自上而下）和先前经验（例如选择历史和学习）的影响。然而，学习和选择历史如何与自上而下的注意力引导相互作用在很大程度上还不清楚。我们结合试错学习和空间提示协议来测试，如果参与者被指示搜索新的目标特征（实验 1）或必须学习新的目标特征（实验 2），那么先前学习的目标定义特征是否会继续吸引注意力。结果表明，当目标特征发生变化时，先前学习的特征会迅速停止吸引注意力（实验 1；甚至在参与者学习新的目标定义特征之前，在实验 2 中）。最后，在实验 3 中，参与者学习搜索由两个冗余特征（颜色和方向）定义的目标，我们找到了指令特征相对于学习优势的可能原因。参与者报告说仅使用目标颜色进行搜索。因此，只有具有目标颜色的线索才能吸引注意力。未使用的目标方向仅在同时意识到两个目标定义特征的参与者（23 名参与者中的 13 名）中并在目标颜色中呈现该方向时才能吸引注意力。我们得出的结论是，目标定义特征的知识及其作为搜索标准的使用对于注意力引导至关重要，而先前学习的目标特征要么仅在这种故意选择的基于自上而下的注意力控制设置下影响注意力引导，要么可能影响视觉搜索但不影响注意力引导。
