Location dominance in attending to color and shape.
Four experiments investigated whether Ss direct attention to stimulus location when attempting to attend to its color or shape. In the first 2 experiments a given property (location, color, or shape) of a letter cue instructed Ss whether to report any letters from a subsequent display. Regardless of which property was relevant, Ss reported letters adjacent to the cue and not those similar to its color or shape. In the last 2 experiments, the varied location of a cue was irrelevant to the task, whereas its varied color instructed Ss to report a letter in a given location or of a given shape. Targets adjacent to the cue were reported faster than those remote from the cue. The results suggest that attempting to attend to any aspect of a stimulus entails directing attention to its location.
Tsal
Y
Y
Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Lavie
N
N
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time