Top

Gepubliceerd in:

01-01-2006 | Original Article

The time course of intended and unintended allocation of attention

Auteur: Gernot Horstmann

Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research | Uitgave 1/2006

Abstract

According to the contingent involuntary orienting hypothesis, only stimuli that match the attentional control settings based on intentions capture attention. In contrast, the surprise-capture hypothesis states that expectancy-discrepant stimuli can capture attention even if they do not match the control settings, implying unintended capture. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether unintended and intended attentional shifts are characterized by different time courses, indicating different underlying mechanisms. An unintended attentional shift was tested by the first, unannounced presentation of a color singleton at the location of a visual search target, and intended shifts by the following repeated presentations of a predictive singleton. Differences in time course were revealed by varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between singleton and target. Results showed that accuracy with expected singletons was barely affected by SOA, whereas SOA strongly affected accuracy with the unexpected singleton. The results are interpreted as supporting the surprise-capture hypothesis. It is furthermore argued that a division of labor between contingent capture and surprise in the control of attention supports adaptive behavior.

vorige artikel The spatial mismatch effect is based on global configuration and not on perceptual records within the visual cache

volgende artikel Serial position effects in implicit memory for multiple-digit numbers

Actually, Wilcocks (1928), following a hypothesis by Selz (1922), conducted the first experiments using unexpected singletons, but he did not use a visual search task in the strictest sense.

It should be emphasized that it is not supposed that the attentional shift is caused by the feeling of surprise. Instead, surprise is conceived of as a syndrome of responses to unexpected (schema-discrepant) events, with one of the components of this syndrome being the attentional shift.

To what extent this is possible remains to be examined. A good guess, however, appears to be that only basic features, but not their conjunctions, capture attention in the way examined in the present experiments (cf. Treisman & Gelade, 1980).

Ansorge, U. & Heumann, M. (2003). Top-down contingencies in peripheral cuing: The roles of color and location. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29, 937–948.CrossRefPubMed

Bacon, W. F., & Egeth, H. (1994). Overriding stimulus-driven attentional capture. Perception & Psychophysics, 55, 485–496.

Bargh, J. A. (1989). Conditional automaticity: Varieties of automatic influence in social perception and cognition. In J. S. Uleman & J. A. Bargh, Unintended Thought (pp. 3–51). New York: Guilford.

Chastain, G., & Cheal, M. L. (1998). Automatic versus directed attention with single-element and multiple-element precues. Visual Cognition, 5, 339–364.

Cheal, M. L., & Chastain, G. (1998). Attention effects of moving and stationary single-element and multiple-element precues: Limits of automaticity. Perception & Psychophysics, 60, 873–887.

Desai, M. M. (1939). Surprise: A historical and experimental study. British Journal of Psychology: Monograph Supplements, 22.

Di Lollo, V., Enns, J. T., & Rensink, R. A. (2000). Competition for consciousness among visual events: The psychophysics of reentrant visual processes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129, 481–507.

Enns, J. T., Austen, E. L., Di Lollo, V., Rauschenberger, R., & Yantis, S. (2001). New objects dominate luminance transients in setting attentional priority. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 27, 1287–1302.CrossRef

Folk, C. L., & Remington, R. (1998). Selectivity in distraction by irrelevant featural singletons: Evidence for two forms of attentional capture. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 24, 847–858.

Folk, C. L., Remington, R. W., Johnston, J. C. (1992). Involuntary covert orienting is contingent on attentional control settings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 18, 1030–1044.CrossRefPubMed

Folk, C. L., Remington, R. W., Johnston, J. C. (1993). Contingent attentional capture: A reply to Yantis (1993). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 19, 682–685.CrossRef

Folk, C. L., Remington, R. W., & Wright, J. H. (1994). The structure of attentional control: Contingent attentional capture by apparent motion, abrupt onset, and color. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 20, 317–329.

Gibson, B. S., & Jiang, Y. (1998). Surprise! An unexpected colour singleton does not capture attention in visual search. Psychological Science, 9, 176–182.CrossRef

Gibson, B. S., & Kelsey, E. M. (1998). Stimulus-driven attentional capture is contingent on attentional set for display-wide visual features. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 699–706.CrossRefPubMed

Horstmann, G. (2002). Evidence for attentional capture by a surprising colour singleton in visual search. Psychological Science, 13, 499–505.CrossRefPubMed

Horstmann, G. (2004). Attentional capture by a surprising colour singleton depends on its expectancy discrepancy. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Jonides, J. (1981). Voluntary versus automatic control over the mind’s eye movement. In J. Long & A. D. Baddeley (Eds.), Attention & Performance IX (pp. 187–203). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Jonides, J., & Yantis, S. (1988). Uniqueness of abrupt visual onset in capturing attention. Perception & Psychophysics, 43, 346–354.

Kim, M. & Cave, K. R. (1999). Top-down and bottom-up attentional control: On the nature of interference from a salient distractor. Perception & Psychophysics, 61, 1009–1023.

Mack, A., & Rock, I. (1998). Inattentional blindness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Meyer, W.-U. (1988). Die Rolle von Überraschung im Attributionsprozeß. Psychologische Rundschau, 39, 136–147.

Meyer, W.-U., Niepel, M. (1994). Surprise. In V. S. Ramachandran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 353–358). Orlando, FL: Academic.

Meyer, W.-U., Niepel, M., Rudolph, U., & Schützwohl, A. (1991). An experimental analysis of surprise. Cognition and Emotion, 5, 295–311.

Meyer, W.-U., Reisenzein, R., & Schützwohl, A. (1997). Toward a process analysis of emotions: The case of surprise. Motivation and Emotion, 21, 251–274.CrossRef

Most, S. B., & Simons, D. J. (2001). Attention capture, orienting, and awareness. In C. Folk & B. Gibson (Eds.), Attraction, distraction, and action: Multiple perspectives on attentional capture (pp. 151–173). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Most, S. B., Simons, D. J., Scholl, B. J., Jimenez, R., Clifford, E., & Chabris, C. F. (2001). How not to be seen: The contribution of similarity and selective ignoring to sustained inattentional blindness. Psychological Science, 12, 9–17.CrossRefPubMed

Neisser, U. (1976). Cognition and reality: Principles and implications of cognitive psychology. San Francisco: Freeman.

Neisser, U. (1979). The control of information pickup in selective looking. In A. D. Pick (Ed.), Perception and its development: A tribute to Eleanor J. Gibson (pp. 201–219). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Neumann, O. (1984). Automatic processing: A review of recent findings and a plea for an old theory. In W. Prinz & A. F. Sanders, Cognition and Motor Processes (pp. 255–293). Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer.

Niepel, M., Rudolph, U., Schützwohl, A. & Meyer, W.-U. (1994). Temporal characteristics of the surprise reaction induced by schema-discrepant visual and auditory events. Cognition and Emotion, 8, 433–452.

Nothdurft, H.-C. (2000). Salience from feature contrast: Variations with texture density. Vision Research, 40, 3181–3200.CrossRefPubMed

Posner, M. I. & Snyder, C. R. R. (1975). Attention and cognitive control. In R. L. Solso (Ed.), Information processing and cognition: The Loyola Symposium (pp. 55–82). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Prinz, W. (1983). Wahrnehmung und Handlungssteuerung. Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer.

Prinz, W. (1990). Unwillkürliche Aufmerksamkeit. In C. Meinecke & L. Kehrer (Eds.), Bielefelder Beiträge zur Kognitionspsychologie (pp. 49–57). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.

Rauschenberger, R. (2003). When something old becomes something new: Spatiotemporal object continuity and attentional capture. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29, 600–615.CrossRefPubMed

Rumelhart, D. E. (1984). Schemata and the cognitive system. In R. S. Wyer & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (Vol. 1, pp. 161–188). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Schützwohl, A. (1998). Surprise and schema strength. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 1182–1199.

Selz, O. (1922). Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums : eine experimentelle Untersuchung. Bonn, Germany: Cohen.

Simons, D. J. (2000). Attentional capture and inattentional blindness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 147–155.CrossRefPubMed

Simons, D. J, & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28, 1059–1074.PubMed

Theeuwes, J. (1992). Perceptual selectivity for color and form. Perception & Psychophysics, 51, 599–606.

Theeuwes, J. (1994). Stimulus-driven capture and attentional set: Selective search for color and visual abrupt onsets. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 799–806.CrossRefPubMed

Theeuwes, J., Burger, R. (1998). Attentional control during visual search: The effect of irrelevant singletons. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 24, 1342–1353.

Theeuwes, J. & Godijn, R. (2001). Attentional and oculomotor capture. In Folk, C. L. & Gibson, B. S. (Eds.), Attraction, distraction and action: Multiple perspectives on attentional capture (pp. 121–149). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Theeuwes, J., Kramer, A. F., Hahn, S., & Irwin, D. E. (1998). Our eyes do not always go where we want them to go: Capture of the eyes by new objects. Psychological Science, 9, 379–385.CrossRef

Treisman, A. M., & Gelade, G. (1980). A feature-integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology, 12, 97–136.PubMed

Wilcocks, R.-W. (1928). The effect of an unexpected heterogeneity on attention. Journal of General Psychology, 1, 286–319.

Wolfe, J. M. (1994). Guided search 2.0: A revised model of visual search. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1, 202–238.

Yantis, S. (1993). Stimulus-driven attentional capture and attentional control settings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 19, 676–681.CrossRefPubMed

Yantis, S., & Egeth, H. E. (1999). On the distinction between visual salience and stimulus-driven attentional capture. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 25, 661–676.CrossRefPubMed

Yantis, S., & Hillstrom, A. P. (1994). Stimulus-driven attentional capture: Evidence from equiluminant visual objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 95–107.CrossRefPubMed

Yantis, S., & Jonides, J. (1984). Abrupt visual onsets and selective attention: Evidence from visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 10, 601–621.CrossRefPubMed

Titel: The time course of intended and unintended allocation of attention
Auteur: Gernot Horstmann
Publicatiedatum: 01-01-2006
Uitgeverij: Springer-Verlag
Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research / Uitgave 1/2006
Print ISSN: 0340-0727
Elektronisch ISSN: 1430-2772
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-004-0184-7

Bohn Stafleu van Loghum

Deel dit onderdeel of sectie (kopieer de link)

Abstract

Log in om toegang te krijgen

Andere artikelen Uitgave 1/2006

Serial position effects in implicit memory for multiple-digit numbers

Recollective experience in odor recognition: Influences of adult age and familiarity

Bidirectional links in the network of multiplication facts

No symmetry advantage when object matching involves accidental viewpoints

The spatial mismatch effect is based on global configuration and not on perceptual records within the visual cache

Eye direction aftereffect