Changing your mind: on the contributions of top-down and bottom-up guidance in visual search for feature singletons.
Observers, searching for targets among distractor items, guide attention with a mix of top-down information--based on observers' knowledge--and bottom-up information--stimulus-based and largely independent of that knowledge. There are 2 types of top-down guidance: explicit information (e.g., verbal description) and implicit priming by preceding targets (top-down because it implies knowledge of previous searches). Experiments 1 and 2 separate bottom-up and top-down contributions to singleton search. Experiment 3 shows that priming effects are based more strongly on target than on distractor identity. Experiments 4 and 5 show that more difficult search for one type of target (color) can impair search for other types (size, orientation). Experiment 6 shows that priming guides attention and does not just modulate response.
Wolfe
Jeremy M
JM
Department of Surgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. wolfe@search.bwh.harvard.edu
Butcher
Serena J
SJ
Lee
Carol
C
Hyle
Megan
M
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003118:Color Perception; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D005364:Field Dependence-Independence; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D011601:Psychophysics; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*