Modigliani V, Loverock D S, Kirson S R
Am J Psychol. 1998 Summer;111(2):215-39.
This study explored the acquisition of features from complex, unfamiliar objects. It tested the principle of top-down encoding, which predicts that the time needed to detect a difference between stimuli that differ in only one critical feature increases and recognition decreases as the level of that feature decreases. Results of Experiment 1 supported these hypotheses. Experiment 2 eliminated retroactive interference as an explanation for the results of Experiment 1. Experiment 3 showed that top-down encoding can be altered by explicit instructions to attend the relevant feature. It also showed that discriminability due to size was not a factor in Experiments 1-3. Experiment 4 showed that the top-down principle can account for how people encode features as a function of task demands. Overall, the results indicate that under normal attention conditions, the probability of encoding a feature decreases with its structural level. However, this tendency can be altered by explicit instructions or other factors.
本研究探讨了从复杂、不熟悉的物体中获取特征的过程。它测试了自上而下编码的原则，该原则预测，当仅在一个关键特征上存在差异的刺激之间的差异水平降低时，检测这些刺激之间差异所需的时间会增加，而识别能力会下降。实验1的结果支持了这些假设。实验2排除了后向干扰作为实验1结果的一种解释。实验3表明，通过明确指示关注相关特征，可以改变自上而下的编码。它还表明，在实验1 - 3中，大小导致的可辨别性不是一个因素。实验4表明，自上而下的原则可以解释人们如何根据任务需求对特征进行编码。总体而言，结果表明，在正常注意力条件下，编码一个特征的概率会随着其结构水平的降低而降低。然而，这种趋势可以通过明确指示或其他因素来改变。
