Efficiency of attentional selection is continuous rather than categorical
-
1
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Allgemeine und Experimentelle Psychologie, Germany
-
2
Birkbeck University of London, Department of Psychological Sciences, United Kingdom
The distinction between efficient and inefficient attentional selection is a cornerstone of any modern theory of attention. Efficient visual search implies that the first item to be selected is always the target, irrespective of the number of distractors (or the display density). Whether or not a target is found efficiently seems to primarily depend on what the target is: if the target is the only item of its kind, i.e., a singleton, the search will be efficient. In other words, efficiency is usually assumed to vary in a categorical (either/or) way predicting efficient search whenever the target is a singleton. However, here we found an inefficient singleton search implying that search efficiency is continuous. On every trial, several diamond-shaped items missing either the top or the bottom corner were briefly presented. One was always different in color from the others (e.g., a red target amongst green distractors) and the task was to report the missing corner of the target. Also, on every trial one of distractors (foil) was an orientation singleton, i.e., the missing corner was either on the left or the right. On different blocks of trials either sparse (4 items) or dense (36 items) displays were used. Analyses of the response times (RTs) and the PCN ERP component locked to the target (indexing the speed of attentional selection) showed both slower RTs and a delayed PCN in sparse relative to dense displays. Critically, the foil-locked PCN was significant only in sparse displays. This demonstrates that the foil, rather than the target, was frequently the first item to be selected, i.e., that selecting a color singleton was inefficient. Our results call for a modification of the current models of spatial attention and the development of new tests of search efficiency. Finally, since many studies investigating early vision used singleton search tasks with sparse displays, the present findings question whether these studies truly investigated only early vision.
Keywords:
Psychophysics,
EEG,
spatial attention,
visual search,
PCN
Conference:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Attention
Citation:
Rangelov
D,
Müller
H and
Töllner
T
(2015). Efficiency of attentional selection is continuous rather than categorical.
Conference Abstract:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00319
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
19 Feb 2015;
Published Online:
24 Apr 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Dragan Rangelov, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Allgemeine und Experimentelle Psychologie, Munich, Germany, d.rangelov@uq.edu.au