title: Space-, object-, and feature-based attention interact to organize visual scenes.
abstract: Biased-competition accounts of attentional processing propose that attention arises from distributed interactions within and among different types of perceptual representations (e.g., spatial, featural, and object-based). Although considerable research has examined the facilitation in processing afforded by attending selectively to spatial locations, or to features, or to objects, surprisingly little research has addressed a key prediction of the biased-competition account: that attending to any stimulus should give rise to simultaneous interactions across all the types of perceptual representations encompassed by that stimulus. Here we show that, when an object in a visual display is cued, space-, feature-, and object-based forms of attention interact to enhance processing of that object and to create a scene-wide pattern of attentional facilitation. These results provide evidence to support the biased-competition framework and suggest that attention might be thought of as a mechanism by which multiple, disparate bottom-up, and even top-down, visual perceptual representations are coordinated and preferentially enhanced.
authors: Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. kravitzd@mail.nih.gov
authors: Dwight J
authors: DJ
authors: Kravitz
authors: Marlene
authors: M
authors: Behrmann
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011930:Reaction Time; D013028:Space Perception; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology