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Measuring Sensitivity to Viewpoint Change with and without Stereoscopic Cues
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Top-down matching singleton cues have no edge over top-down matching nonsingletons in spatial cueing
Tobias Schoeberl1, Florian Goller2, Ulrich Ansorge2
1Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Liebiggasse 5, 1010, Wien, Austria. tobias.schoeberl@univie.ac.at.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|July 1, 2018
Summary
Object salience does not automatically capture attention. Instead, attention is guided by top-down contingent capture, even with highly salient stimuli, challenging stimulus-driven theories of visual attention.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Attentional selection is crucial for processing visual information.
- The role of object salience in early attentional selection remains debated.
- Distinguishing between stimulus-driven and top-down attentional control is key.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether object salience influences attentional selection at early visual processing stages.
- To examine the interplay between stimulus-driven and top-down attentional control.
- To test the contingent-capture hypothesis in a novel peripheral-cueing paradigm.
Main Methods:
- A modified peripheral-cueing paradigm was employed.
- Participants performed a visual search task for targets of specific colors.
- Cueing displays varied in object relevance (all-relevant vs. control conditions).
Main Results:
- Cueing effects were significantly reduced in all-relevant cueing displays compared to control conditions.
- This reduction was observed even with a very brief cue-target interval.
- Results indicate that attention was not automatically captured by salient, task-irrelevant stimuli.
Conclusions:
- Attention is contingently captured in a top-down manner, even during initial processing of salient stimuli.
- Findings argue against purely stimulus-driven capture of attention followed by disengagement.
- Top-down control mechanisms play a significant role in early visual attentional selection.
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