Attention to Colour? Detecting and Discriminating Luminance Changes
| Autor: | R J Snowden, P T Brawn |
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| Rok vydání: | 1997 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Perception. 26:98-98 |
| ISSN: | 1468-4233 0301-0066 |
| DOI: | 10.1068/v970173 |
| Popis: | It is well established that cueing the location of a target stimulus can improve performance on certain visual tasks over ‘uncued’ locations. Here we ask whether cueing the colour of a target can produce similar gains in performance. Subjects viewed a screen on which a large number (16, 32, or 64) of circles were randomly arranged. At random, half were coloured green and half red. After a short period the luminance of one of the circles was altered and the subject's reaction time to this change was measured. Within a block of trials subjects were informed that the target would be one of the red elements, green elements, or could be of either colour. We found that reaction time to detect this change was (1) unaffected by the number of elements on the screen and (2) unaffected by cueing the target colour. The reaction time to discriminate the polarity of this change was (1) unaffected by the number of elements on the screen and (2) faster when the target colour was cued. We therefore demonstrate that cueing the target colour can serve to improve performance under some conditions. We account for these results by suggesting that subjects give greater ‘weight’ to signals from the target colour into a map that guides visual attention—in line with guided search type models (eg Wolfe, 1994 Psychonomic Bulletin and Review1 202 – 238). This cueing effect is therefore only demonstrable in tasks that require ‘focal attention’ (eg Sagi and Julesz, 1985 Perception14 619 – 628). |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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