Demands on attention and the role of response priming in visual discrimination of feature conjunctions.
This study examined how response mapping of features within single- and multiple-feature targets affects decision-based processing and attentional capacity demands. Observers judged the presence or absence of 1 or 2 target features within an object either presented alone or with distractors. Judging the presence of 2 features relative to the less discriminable of these features alone was faster (conjunction benefits) when the task-relevant features differed in discriminability and were consistently mapped to responses. Conjunction benefits were attributed to asynchronous decision priming across attended, task-relevant dimensions. A failure to find conjunction benefits for disjunctive conjunctions was attributed to increased memory demands and variable feature-response mapping for 2- versus single-feature targets. Further, attentional demands were similar between single- and 2-feature targets when response mapping, memory demands, and discriminability of the task-relevant features were equated between targets. Implications of the findings for recent attention models are discussed.
Department of Psychology, Washington State University, Pullman 99164-4820, USA. fournier@wsunix.wsu.edu
Lisa R
LR
Fournier
Rhonda J
RJ
Herbert
Carrie
C
Farris
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003657:Decision Making; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012718:Set, Psychology