Kerzel Dirk, Lamy Dominique
Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, 40 Boulevard du Pont d'Arve, CH-1205, Geneva, Switzerland.
School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv, University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2025 May;87(4):1150-1161. doi: 10.3758/s13414-024-02998-0. Epub 2024 Dec 23.
Searching for a unique target is faster when its unique feature repeats than when it changes. The standard account for this priming-of-popout (PoP) phenomenon is that selecting a target increases the attentional priority of its features in subsequent searches. However, empirical tests of this priority account have yielded contradictory findings. Here, we attempted to clarify why support of its predictions has been elusive in spatial-cueing studies. We noted that the repetition manipulation is stronger in PoP studies than in spatial-cueing studies: The target and nontarget features either repeat or swap in the former, whereas in the latter, the target color either repeats or changes while the nontarget color remains constant. Here, we implemented the stronger repetition manipulation in the spatial-cueing paradigm. If PoP affects attentional priority, the cue-validity effect should be larger when the current-cue color and previous-target color match than when they mismatch. The results of Experiment 1 revealed the opposite effect. Moreover, they showed that well-replicated contingent-capture effects do not hold when target and nontarget colors are allowed to swap-an observation that was confirmed in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, we verified that with our experimental set-up, a subtle manipulation of attentional priority could modulate cue-validity effects. While the present study does not resolve why evidence for the priority account is inconsistent with the spatial-cueing paradigm, they eliminate one possible reason for such inconsistency. They also reveal that allowing the target and distractors color to swap masks contingent-capture effects, thereby highlighting the complexity of spatial-cueing effects.
当独特目标的独特特征重复出现时，寻找它的速度比其特征变化时更快。对于这种弹出式启动（PoP）现象的标准解释是，选择一个目标会增加其特征在后续搜索中的注意优先级。然而，对这种优先级解释的实证检验得出了相互矛盾的结果。在这里，我们试图阐明为什么在空间线索研究中难以获得对其预测的支持。我们注意到，PoP研究中的重复操作比空间线索研究中的更强：在前者中，目标和非目标特征要么重复要么交换，而在后者中，目标颜色要么重复要么变化，而非目标颜色保持不变。在这里，我们在空间线索范式中实施了更强的重复操作。如果PoP影响注意优先级，那么当当前线索颜色与先前目标颜色匹配时，线索有效性效应应该比它们不匹配时更大。实验1的结果显示了相反的效应。此外，结果表明，当允许目标和非目标颜色交换时，反复验证的偶然捕获效应不成立——这一观察结果在实验2中得到了证实。在实验3中，我们验证了在我们的实验设置下，对注意优先级的微妙操作可以调节线索有效性效应。虽然本研究没有解决为什么优先级解释的证据与空间线索范式不一致的问题，但消除了这种不一致的一个可能原因。研究还表明，允许目标和干扰物颜色交换会掩盖偶然捕获效应，从而突出了空间线索效应的复杂性。
