Learned feature regularities enable suppression of spatially overlapping stimuli.

Atten Percept Psychophys

Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106-9660, USA.

Published: April 2023

Contemporary theories of attentional control state that information can be prioritized based on selection history. Even though theories agree that selection history can impact representations of spatial location, which in turn helps guide attention, there remains disagreement on whether nonspatial features (e.g., color) are modulated in a similar way. While previous work has demonstrated color suppression using visual search tasks, it is possible that the location corresponding to the distractor was suppressed, consistent with a spatial mechanism of suppression. Here, we sought to rule out this possibility by testing whether similar suppression of a learned distractor color can occur for spatially overlapping visual stimuli. On a given trial, two spatially superimposed stimuli (line arrays) were tilted either left or right of vertical and presented in one of four distinct colors. Subjects performed a speeded report of the orientation of the "target" array with the most lines. Critically, the distractor array was regularly one color, and this high-probability color was never the color of the target array, which encouraged learned suppression. In two experiments, responses to the target array were fastest when the distractor array was in the high-probability color, suggesting participants suppressed the distractor color. Additionally, when regularities were removed, the high-probability distractor color continued to benefit speeded target identification for individual subjects (E1) but slowed target identification (E2) when presented in the target array. Together, these results indicate that learned suppression of feature-based regularities modulates target detection performance independent of spatial location and persists over time.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10066085PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-022-02612-1DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

distractor color
12
target array
12
color
9
spatially overlapping
8
selection history
8
spatial location
8
distractor array
8
high-probability color
8
learned suppression
8
target identification
8

Similar Publications

Treatment of limb skin defect with self-made skin distractor.

BMC Musculoskelet Disord

December 2024

Orthopedic Research Institute of HeBei Province, Orthopedic Biomechanic Key Laboratory of Hebei Province, Trauma Emergency Center of Third Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, 050051, China.

Objective: To investigate the effect of self-made skin distractor in the treatment of limb skin defects.

Methods: From September 2018 to January 2020, 15 cases of limb skin defects (16 wounds) were treated with self-designed skin distractor, including 13 males and 2 females, with an average age of 42 years (range, 9-73 years). The smallest area of skin defect was 6 cm×3 cm, the largest was 32 cm ×7 cm, with an average of 72.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Efficient searches are guided by target-distractor distinctiveness: the greater the distinctiveness, the faster the search. Previous research showed that when the target and distractors differ along both color and shape dimensions (i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Priming of pop-out in the spatial-cueing paradigm.

Atten Percept Psychophys

December 2024

School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv, University, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Searching for a unique target is faster when its unique feature repeats than when it changes. The standard account for this priming-of-popout (PoP) phenomenon is that selecting a target increases the attentional priority of its features in subsequent searches. However, empirical tests of this priority account have yielded contradictory findings.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Attention has been shown to modulate the visual evoked potential (VEP) recorded to reversing achromatic patterns. However, the chromatic onset VEP appears to be robust to attentional shifts. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) responses to both chromatic and achromatic reversing patterns are also affected by attention.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Previous research has consistently shown that high trait anxiety (HTA) reduces spatial and verbal working memory capacity. However, its effects on visual working memory (VWM) are inconsistent, and the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This study investigates the impact of trait anxiety on VWM capacity and the role of filtering efficiency through two experiments.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!