Top-down and bottom-up attentional control: on the nature of interference from a salient distractor.
In two experiments using spatial probes, we measured the temporal and spatial interactions between top-down control of attention and bottom-up interference from a salient distractor in visual search. The subjects searched for a square among circles, ignoring color. Probe response times showed that a color singleton distractor could draw attention to its location in the early stage of visual processing (before a 100-msec stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA]), but only when the color singleton distractor was located far from the target. Apparently the bottom-up activation of the singleton distractor's location is affected early on by local interactions with nearby stimulus locations. Moreover, probe results showed that a singleton distractor did not receive attention after extended practice. These results suggest that top-down control of attention is possible at an early stage of visual processing. In the long-SOA condition (150-msec SOA), spatial attention selected the target location over distractor locations, and this tendency occurred with or without extended practice.
Kim
M S
MS
Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. coglit.soton.ac.uk
Cave
K R
KR
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time