Carrasco M, Yeshurun Y
Department of Psychology, New York University, New York 10003-6634, USA.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 1998 Apr;24(2):673-92. doi: 10.1037//0096-1523.24.2.673.
To reexamine the role of covert attention in visual search, the authors directly manipulated attention by peripherally cueing the target location and analyzed its effects on the set-size and the eccentricity effects. Observers participated in feature and conjunction tasks. Experiment 1 used precues, and Experiment 2 used postcues in a yes-no task under valid-, invalid-, and neutral-cueing conditions. Experiments 3 and 4 used a 2-interval alternative forced-choice visual-search task under cued and neutral conditions. Precueing the target location improved performance in feature and conjunction searches; postcueing did not. For the cued targets, the eccentricity effect for features and conjunctions was diminished, suggesting that the attentional mechanism improves the quality of the sensory representation of the attended location. The conjunction set-size effect was reduced but not eliminated. This questions serial-search models that attribute a major role to covert attention in visual search.
为了重新审视隐蔽注意在视觉搜索中的作用，作者通过在周边提示目标位置直接操纵注意，并分析其对集合大小效应和离心率效应的影响。观察者参与了特征和联合任务。实验1使用预提示，实验2在有效提示、无效提示和中性提示条件下的是/否任务中使用后提示。实验3和4在提示和中性条件下使用两间隔迫选视觉搜索任务。预提示目标位置提高了特征和联合搜索的表现；后提示则没有。对于被提示的目标，特征和联合的离心率效应减弱，这表明注意机制提高了被注意位置的感觉表征质量。联合集合大小效应减小但未消除。这对在视觉搜索中赋予隐蔽注意主要作用的序列搜索模型提出了质疑。
