title: Item and category-based attentional control during search for real-world objects: Can you find the pants among the pans?
abstract: To compare the speed and efficiency of item-based and category-based attentional control during visual search for real-world objects, we measured N2pc components as electrophysiological markers of attentional target selection. In different blocks, participants searched for 1 or 2 specific target objects or for any object in a target category (items of clothing or kitchen objects). Search displays contained 6 line drawings of different objects, and targets always appeared together with 5 distractors from the other object category. The presence of N2pc components to categorically defined targets demonstrated that category-based search can operate at visuoperceptual processing stages. In contrast to previous findings for letter/digit search (Nako, Wu, & Eimer, 2014), target N2pc components were delayed by 40 ms during category-guided search relative to single-target search. This suggests that for objects and object categories that are less familiar than alphanumerical stimuli, category-guided target selection operates less efficiently than selection that is based on a physical match with an attentional template. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences.
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nako
authors.affiliation: University of Rochester.
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences.
authors.forename: Tim J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Eimer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult