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Related Experiment Videos

Prioritizing selection of new elements: bottom-up versus top-down control.

Mieke Donk1, Jan Theeuwes

  • 1Department of Cognitive Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. w.donk@psy.vu.nl

Perception & Psychophysics
|January 9, 2004
PubMed
Summary
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Prioritized selection of new visual elements over old ones happens automatically. This suggests a bottom-up attentional process, not top-down inhibition, guides our focus on novel stimuli.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Visual Perception
  • Attention Studies

Background:

  • Theories proposed visual marking, a top-down inhibition mechanism, explains prioritizing new over old visual elements.
  • Recent research questioned the validity of top-down mechanisms in visual selection.
  • The debate centers on whether attentional prioritization is driven by voluntary control or stimulus-driven salience.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether the prioritized selection of new over old visual elements is a bottom-up or top-down process.
  • To test the hypothesis that visual marking (top-down inhibition) underlies this prioritization.
  • To contribute to understanding attentional control mechanisms in visual search.

Main Methods:

  • Participants viewed displays with sequentially presented old and new visual elements.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Search tasks involved identifying targets equally or unequally distributed among old and new elements.
  • Behavioral responses were analyzed to infer attentional prioritization mechanisms.

    • Main Results:

    • New elements were consistently prioritized for selection over old elements.
    • This prioritization occurred even without explicit observer incentive.
    • Results indicate that the effect is not mediated by top-down inhibition.

    Conclusions:

    • Prioritized selection of new visual elements is a bottom-up process.
    • This challenges the visual marking theory proposed by Watson and Humphreys.
    • Findings have implications for models of attentional control and visual processing.