Jing Chengxu, Jin Hongyuan, Li Wenxia, Wu Zhouhao, Chen Yao, Huang Dan
School of Automation and Electronic Information, Sichuan University of Science and Engineering, Sichuan, China.
Artificial Intelligence Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Sichuan University of Science and Engineering, Sichuan, China.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2023 Jan 25;16:1020260. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.1020260. eCollection 2022.
Orienting attention to a specific point in time has been shown to improve the contrast sensitivity at the attended time point and impair it earlier or later. This phenomenon could be explained by temporal attention increasing the effective contrast of the target presented at the attended time point which leads to changes in contrast psychometric function by contrast gain. Another explanation is that temporal attention multiplicatively amplifies the amplitude of behavioral or neural response to contrast, resulting in alterations in contrast psychometric function by response gain. To explore the underlying mechanism, we adopted a temporal cueing orientation discrimination task using audio pre-cues composed of different frequency components to induce different attentional allocations in the time domain and targets of various contrast intensities to measure contrast psychometric functions. Obtained psychometric functions for contrast sensitivity were fitted for different conditions with discrepant attentional states in time. We found that temporal attention manipulated by cue affected contrast psychometric function by response gain, indicating that multiplying the contrast response of the visual target occurring at the selected point in time by a fixed factor is a crucial way for temporal attention to modulate perceptual processing.
研究表明，将注意力定向到特定时间点能够提高该时间点的对比度敏感度，同时降低该时间点之前或之后的对比度敏感度。这种现象可以解释为，时间注意力增加了在该时间点呈现的目标的有效对比度，从而通过对比度增益导致对比度心理测量函数发生变化。另一种解释是，时间注意力以乘法方式放大了对对比度的行为或神经反应的幅度，从而通过反应增益导致对比度心理测量函数发生改变。为了探究其潜在机制，我们采用了一种时间线索定向辨别任务，使用由不同频率成分组成的音频预线索来在时域中诱导不同的注意力分配，并使用各种对比度强度的目标来测量对比度心理测量函数。针对不同条件下时间上注意力状态不同的情况，对获得的对比度敏感度心理测量函数进行了拟合。我们发现，由线索操纵的时间注意力通过反应增益影响对比度心理测量函数，这表明将在所选时间点出现的视觉目标的对比度反应乘以一个固定因子是时间注意力调节感知处理的关键方式。
