Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, 4235 TAMU, College Station, TX, 77843-4235, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2023 Aug;85(6):1834-1845. doi: 10.3758/s13414-023-02747-9. Epub 2023 Jun 22.
Mental imagery and perceptual cues can influence subsequent visual search performance, but examination of this influence has been limited to low-level features like colors and shapes. The present study investigated how the two types of cues influence low-level visual search, visual search with realistic objects, and executive attention. On each trial, participants were either presented with a colored square or tasked with using mental imagery to generate a colored square that could match the target (valid trial) or distractor (invalid trial) in the search array that followed (Experiments 1 and 3). In a separate experiment, the colored square displayed or generated was replaced with a realistic object in a specific category that could appear as a target or distractor in the search array (Experiment 2). Although the displayed object was in the same category as an item in the search display, they were never a perfect match (e.g., jam drop cookie instead of chocolate chip). Our findings revealed that the facilitation of performance on valid trials compared with invalid trials was greater for perceptual cues than imagery cues for low-level features (Experiment 1), whereas the influence of these two types of cues was comparable in the context of realistic objects (Experiment 2) The influence of mental imagery appears not to extend to the resolution of conflict generated by color-word Stroop stimuli (Experiment 3). The present findings extend our understanding of how mental imagery influences the allocation of attention.
表象和知觉提示可以影响后续的视觉搜索表现，但这种影响的研究仅局限于颜色和形状等低水平特征。本研究调查了这两种提示如何影响低水平视觉搜索、现实物体的视觉搜索以及执行注意。在每次试验中，参与者要么呈现一个彩色方块，要么任务是使用表象生成一个可以与搜索数组中随后出现的目标（有效试验）或干扰项（无效试验）匹配的彩色方块（实验 1 和 3）。在另一个实验中，显示或生成的彩色方块被替换为特定类别中的现实物体，这些物体可以作为搜索数组中的目标或干扰项出现（实验 2）。尽管显示的物体与搜索显示中的一个项目属于同一类别，但它们永远不会完全匹配（例如，果酱滴饼干而不是巧克力片）。我们的研究结果表明，与无效试验相比，有效试验的表现促进作用在低水平特征方面，知觉提示比表象提示更大（实验 1），而在现实物体的情况下，这两种类型的提示的影响相当（实验 2）。表象的影响似乎不会扩展到颜色-词语斯特鲁普刺激引起的冲突的解决（实验 3）。本研究结果扩展了我们对表象如何影响注意力分配的理解。
