Search efficiency is not sufficient: The nature of search modulates stimulus-driven attention
Autor: | Suk Won Han, Koeun Jung, Yoon-Ki Min |
---|---|
Rok vydání: | 2018 |
Předmět: |
Visual search
Linguistics and Language Singleton Computer science 05 social sciences Attentional control Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Stimulus (physiology) Capture effect Visual search tasks 050105 experimental psychology Sensory Systems Language and Linguistics 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Salient 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences 030217 neurology & neurosurgery Cognitive psychology |
Zdroj: | Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics. 81:61-70 |
ISSN: | 1943-393X 1943-3921 |
Popis: | It has long been debated whether or not a salient stimulus automatically attracts people's attention in visual search. Recent findings showed that a salient stimulus is likely to capture attention especially when the search process was inefficient due to high levels of competition between the target and distractors. Expanding these studies, the present study proposes that a specific nature of visual search, as well as search efficiency, determines whether or not a salient, task-irrelevant singleton stimulus captures attention. To test this proposition, we conducted three experiments, in which participants performed two visual search tasks whose underlying mechanisms are known to be different: orientation-feature search and Landolt-C search tasks. We found that color singleton distractors captured attention when participants performed the orientation-feature search task. The magnitude of this capture effect increased as search efficiency decreased. On the contrary, the capture by singleton distractors was not observed under the Landolt-C search task. This differential pattern of capture effect was not due to differences in search efficiency across the search tasks; even when search efficiency was controlled for, stimulus-driven capture of attention by a salient distractor was found only under the feature search. Based on these results, the present study suggests that in addition to search efficiency, the nature of search strategy and the extent to which attentional control is strained play crucial roles in observing stimulus-driven attentional capture in visual search. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
Externí odkaz: |