The guidance of spatial attention during visual search for color combinations and color configurations.

Berggren, Nick; Eimer, Martin · 2016 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000225

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Summary

This study investigates how attentional templates guide spatial attention during visual search for targets defined by multiple features within the same dimension, specifically color. While previous research established that templates can represent single features or conjunctions across different dimensions (e.g., color and size), it remained unclear how templates handle combinations of features from the same dimension, such as two specific colors or a specific spatial configuration of those colors. The authors aimed to determine whether attentional guidance processes operate in parallel for multiple features and whether they can distinguish between color combinations and their spatial configurations. The researchers employed behavioral and electrophysiological methods across three experiments. Participants performed visual search tasks where target displays were preceded by spatially uninformative cue displays containing items with one or both target-defining colors. Experiment 1 used EEG to measure the N2pc component, an electrophysiological marker of attentional selection, while participants searched for rectangles defined by a combination of two colors (e.g., red and green). Cue displays varied in whether they contained fully matching items (both target colors), partially matching items (one target color), or no matching items. Experiment 2 replicated the behavioral design of Experiment 1 but reduced the cue-target interval to assess the timing of attentional withdrawal. Experiment 3 investigated search for targets defined by a specific spatial configuration of two colors (e.g., red above green) versus a different configuration (green above red). Results from Experiments 1 and 2 supported a two-stage model of attentional selection. Electrophysiological data showed that N2pc components were elicited by both fully and partially matching color cues, indicating that attention is initially allocated in parallel to all objects possessing any target-matching color. However, behavioral data revealed that positive spatial cueing effects (faster reaction times) occurred only for fully matching cues. Partially matching cues elicited inverse cueing effects, suggesting that attention is rapidly withdrawn from objects that do not possess all target features. Experiment 2 confirmed this timing by showing that when the cue-target interval was shortened, partially matching cues produced positive cueing effects, indicating that attention had not yet been withdrawn. In contrast, Experiment 3 found that attentional guidance could not distinguish between different spatial configurations of the same two colors; both the target configuration and the distractor configuration attracted attention equally and were encoded into working memory. These findings demonstrate that attentional templates guide attention simultaneously by multiple features from the same dimension but lack access to spatial-configural properties. The results suggest that attentional templates do not represent target objects in an integrated, pictorial fashion. Instead, they contain separate, independent representations of target-defining features. Attention is initially captured by any feature matching the template, followed by a rapid filtering process that withdraws attention from objects lacking the complete set of target features, while spatial relationships between features remain inaccessible to early attentional guidance mechanisms.

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Topics

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• visual search
• attention selective divided