Department of Psychology, University of California San Diego.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2024 Dec;50(12):1236-1247. doi: 10.1037/xhp0001249. Epub 2024 Oct 31.
Spatial attention enhances processing of information, but how does unattended and task-irrelevant information influence visual processing within the spatial focus of attention? We tested this by asking participants to extract the average emotional expression of a set of sequentially presented faces while simultaneously presenting task-irrelevant faces at a spatially unattended and task-irrelevant location. Across several experiments, we found that participants' reports of the emotional expression of faces at the attended location were biased toward the task-irrelevant faces. For example, when happier faces were presented at the unattended location, participants were biased to perceive the attended faces as happier. A control experiment in which participants were asked to also detect probes at cued and uncued locations showed that spatial attention was directed towards the cued location as instructed. Together, these results reveal that unattended and task-irrelevant inputs do not only affect the efficiency of target processing, for example by slowing responses or lowering accuracies, but that they can systematically bias ensemble representations within the spatial focus of attention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
空间注意增强了信息处理能力，但未被注意和与任务无关的信息如何影响空间注意焦点内的视觉处理？我们通过要求参与者在同时呈现空间上未被注意和与任务无关位置的任务无关面孔的情况下，提取一组连续呈现面孔的平均情绪表达，来测试这一点。在几项实验中，我们发现参与者对注意力集中位置面孔的情绪表达的报告偏向于任务无关的面孔。例如，当呈现更快乐的面孔在未被注意的位置时，参与者会倾向于认为被注意的面孔更快乐。一个控制实验中，要求参与者也在提示和未提示的位置检测探针，表明空间注意力被指示指向提示的位置。这些结果表明，未被注意和与任务无关的输入不仅会影响目标处理的效率，例如通过减慢反应速度或降低准确性，而且它们可以系统地偏向空间注意焦点内的整体表示。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2024 APA，保留所有权利）。
