Zhang Fan, Makwana Mukesh, Heinke Dietmar, Song Joo-Hyun
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2025 Apr 7. doi: 10.3758/s13414-025-03068-9.
Everyday interactions with a complex environment often demand selecting a single target among multiple distractors. A recent framework of attentional control suggests that object selection is influenced not only by perceptual salience and current goals but also by selection history. Here, we examine how this interplay between target and distractor history manifests in individual differences in target selection for goal-directed reaching movements. We employ a priming-of-popout (PoP) paradigm combined with continuous tracking of reaching movements. Participants reach for an odd-colored target among homogeneous distractors while we systematically manipulate the sequence of target and distractor colors from one trial to the next. We record behavioral data such as reach trajectory, initiation latency, and movement time, and calculate attraction scores using the single target reach trajectory as the baseline to evaluate performance across six conditions. For each participant, we determine their maximum attraction score and its timing for each condition. Subsequently, using k-means clustering and t-SNE analysis identifies four distinct clusters as subgroups, indicating different strategies in attentional and action selection with varying degrees of influence from previous target versus distractor feature repetition and their distinct contributions to PoP. Our findings underscore that previous selection history triggers a dynamic interaction between target facilitation and distractor inhibition, resulting in individual differences in target selection strategies for goal-directed actions.
在复杂环境中的日常互动通常需要在多个干扰物中选择单个目标。最近的注意力控制框架表明，对象选择不仅受感知显著性和当前目标的影响，还受选择历史的影响。在这里，我们研究目标和干扰物历史之间的这种相互作用如何在目标导向的伸手动作的目标选择的个体差异中体现出来。我们采用了弹出式启动（PoP）范式并结合对伸手动作的持续跟踪。参与者在均匀的干扰物中伸手去够一个颜色奇特的目标，同时我们系统地操纵从一次试验到下一次试验的目标和干扰物颜色序列。我们记录诸如伸手轨迹、起始潜伏期和运动时间等行为数据，并使用单个目标伸手轨迹作为基线来计算吸引力分数，以评估六种条件下的表现。对于每个参与者，我们确定他们在每种条件下的最大吸引力分数及其时间。随后，使用k均值聚类和t-SNE分析将四个不同的聚类识别为亚组，表明在注意力和动作选择方面的不同策略，受到先前目标与干扰物特征重复的不同程度影响以及它们对PoP的不同贡献。我们的研究结果强调，先前的选择历史会引发目标促进和干扰物抑制之间的动态相互作用，从而导致目标导向行动的目标选择策略存在个体差异。
