Forstinger Marlene, Ansorge Ulrich
Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, University of Vienna, Austria.
Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, University of Vienna, Austria; Vienna Cognitive Science Hub, University of Vienna, Austria; Research Platform Mediatised Lifeworlds, University of Vienna, Austria.
Cognition. 2023 Jun;235:105415. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105415. Epub 2023 Feb 22.
While searching for a goal-relevant object, an internal representation of the features necessary to identify the to-be-searched-for object (i.e., target) guides attention towards visual stimuli with matching properties. Recent evidence suggests that features that negatively define a target (i.e., negative features) also bias attentional allocation through top-down suppression. Since humans usually know what to look for, it will rarely, if ever, be the case that a negative feature defines a goal-relevant object alone. Thus, to better understand the relevance of top-down suppression, our participants searched for a target conjunctively defined by a positive (e.g., a blue bar) and a negative feature (e.g., a nonred bar) with both features realized within the same dimension (color in Experiments 1, 3 and 4, orientation in Experiment 2). Experiments 1 and 2 showed that reaction times were slower if cues with a negative feature preceded the target at the same versus a different position (i.e., validly vs. invalidly cued targets), indicating suppression. In contrast, cues with a task-irrelevant different-dimension feature elicited no significant reaction time difference between validly cued and invalidly cued trials. In addition, Experiment 3 showed that while negative cues were top-down suppressed, cues with a positive feature captured attention. This finding indicated that both positive and negative features guide visual attention through capture and suppression, respectively, during the search for a target defined by the presence of one and the absence of another feature from the same dimension. However, suppression seems to apply to the negative and all nontarget features in the task-relevant dimension. This was shown in Experiment 4, in which participants suppressed cues with a task-irrelevant color similarly to cues with a negative color.
在寻找与目标相关的物体时，用于识别待搜索物体（即目标）所需特征的内部表征会将注意力引向具有匹配属性的视觉刺激。最近的证据表明，负面定义目标的特征（即负面特征）也会通过自上而下的抑制作用来影响注意力分配。由于人类通常知道要寻找什么，所以仅由负面特征定义与目标相关物体的情况很少见，如果有的话。因此，为了更好地理解自上而下抑制的相关性，我们的参与者搜索由一个正面特征（例如蓝色条）和一个负面特征（例如非红色条）联合定义的目标，且两个特征都在同一维度内实现（实验1、3和4中的颜色，实验2中的方向）。实验1和2表明，如果带有负面特征的线索在相同位置而非不同位置先于目标出现（即有效提示与无效提示目标），反应时间会更慢，这表明存在抑制作用。相比之下，具有任务无关的不同维度特征的线索在有效提示和无效提示试验之间没有引发显著的反应时间差异。此外，实验3表明，虽然负面线索受到自上而下的抑制，但具有正面特征的线索会吸引注意力。这一发现表明，在搜索由同一维度中一个特征的存在和另一个特征的缺失所定义的目标时，正面和负面特征分别通过吸引和抑制来引导视觉注意力。然而，抑制似乎适用于任务相关维度中的负面特征和所有非目标特征。这在实验4中得到了证明，在该实验中，参与者对具有任务无关颜色的线索的抑制与对具有负面颜色线索的抑制类似。
