title: The influence of object similarity and orientation on object-based cueing.
abstract: Responses to targets that appear at a noncued position within the same object (invalid-same) compared to a noncued position at an equidistant different object (invalid-different) tend to be faster and more accurate. These cueing effects have been taken as evidence that visual attention can be object based (Egly, Driver, & Rafal, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123, 161-177, 1994). Recent findings, however, have shown that the object-based cueing effect is influenced by object orientation, suggesting that the cueing effect might be due to a more general facilitation of attentional shifts across the horizontal meridian (Al-Janabi & Greenberg, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 1-17, 2016; Pilz, Roggeveen, Creighton, Bennet, & Sekuler, PLOS ONE, 7, e30693, 2012). The aim of this study was to investigate whether the object-based cueing effect is influenced by object similarity and orientation. According to the object-based attention account, objects that are less similar to each other should elicit stronger object-based cueing effects independent of object orientation, whereas the horizontal meridian theory would not predict any effect of object similarity. We manipulated object similarity by using a color (Exp. 1, Exp. 2A) or shape change (Exp. 2B) to distinguish two rectangles in a variation of the classic two-rectangle paradigm (Egly et al., 1994). We found that the object-based cueing effects were influenced by the orientation of the rectangles and strengthened by object dissimilarity. We suggest that object-based cueing effects are strongly affected by the facilitation of attention along the horizontal meridian, but that they also have an object-based attentional component, which is revealed when the dissimilarity between the presented objects is accentuated.
authors: Evolutionary Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, Schleichstr. 4, 72076, Tübingen, Germany. elisabeth.hein@uni-tuebingen.de.
authors: Elisabeth
authors: E
authors: Hein
authors: Plettenbergschule für Physiotherapie, Balingen, Germany.
authors: Stefan
authors: S
authors: Blaschke
authors: Evolutionary Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, Schleichstr. 4, 72076, Tübingen, Germany.
authors: Bettina
authors: B
authors: Rolke
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Meridian effect; Object-based attention; Object-based cueing; Visual perception