Two routes to a target: Visual priming for direct and indirect attentional sets

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Visual Perception

Background:

• Attentional sets, driven by expectations, guide object search.
• These sets can dictate whether items are attended to or ignored.
• Prior experience can influence the formation and effectiveness of attentional sets.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how direct and indirect attentional sets influence target search.
• To examine the effect of prior experience on attentional sets.
• To analyze the impact of attentional sets on priming using computational models.

Main Methods:

• Participants performed target identification tasks under direct (target present) and indirect (target defined by exclusion) attentional set conditions.
• Behavioral time series data were analyzed using multiple dynamic ideal observer models.
• Models were based on a first-order memory mechanism with stages for set identification, target identification, and response.

Main Results:

• Response times were significantly slower for indirect attentional sets and mixed blocks.
• Strong repetition priming occurred when both the attentional set and target were repeated.
• Direct attentional set priming aligned with memory mechanisms tracking objects/colors, linked to frontoparietal networks.
• Indirect attentional set processing involved different mechanisms, potentially related to task switching and attentional set generation networks.

Conclusions:

• Direct and indirect attentional sets employ distinct cognitive and neural mechanisms.
• Indirect attentional sets require more complex processing and different search strategies compared to direct sets.
• Repetition priming effects provide insights into the underlying memory and attentional processes for each set type.