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Published on: August 29, 2018
Parallel, independent attentional control settings for colors and shapes
Maha Adamo1, Simon Wozny, Jay Pratt
1University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. maha@psych.utoronto.ca
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics
|October 19, 2010
Summary
Two attentional control settings (ACSs) for different features like color and shape can be active simultaneously. Color-based ACSs showed slightly stronger contingent capture effects than shape-based ones.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Neuroscience
- Visual perception
Background:
- Attentional capture is influenced by attentional control settings (ACSs).
- ACSs enable peripheral cues to affect target processing only if they share a critical feature.
- Previous research showed simultaneous maintenance of two ACSs within the same feature category.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate the processing stage of attentional control settings (ACSs).
- Compare the efficacy of ACSs from different feature categories (shape and color) at different visual processing levels.
- Determine if two ACSs from distinct feature sets can be maintained in parallel.
Main Methods:
- Participants responded to targets defined by specific colors and shapes at distinct locations.
- Non-target colors and shapes were presented to be ignored.
- Compared the contingent capture effects of ACSs defined by color versus shape.
Main Results:
- Spatial capture was modulated by whether cues matched an ACS.
- Contingent capture effects were slightly stronger for color-defined ACSs compared to shape-defined ACSs.
- Effectiveness of the control set varied depending on the feature type.
Conclusions:
- Two ACSs from different feature sets (color and shape) can be maintained in parallel.
- The effectiveness of parallel ACSs varies with the feature type.
- This suggests parallel processing of different feature-based attentional control settings.
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