Bottom-up and Top-down Control in Visual Search

van Zoest, Wieske; Donk, Mieke · 2004 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1068/p5158

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (DOI — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

This study investigates the interrelationship between stimulus-driven (bottom-up) and goal-driven (top-down) control in visual attention. While previous research has often emphasized one mechanism over the other, few studies have independently manipulated variables affecting both to determine how they jointly influence search performance. The authors aimed to resolve whether attentional selection is primarily determined by the relative salience of stimuli or by the observer’s goal-directed settings, and whether these processes interact or operate independently. The experiment employed a visual search task where participants identified the presence or absence of a vertical line segment (target) among an array of nontargets and, in some trials, a single irrelevant distractor. The researchers independently manipulated two key variables: relative target–distractor salience and target–distractor similarity. Salience was controlled by varying the absolute orientation difference between the distractor and the nontargets, making the distractor either more or less salient than the target. Similarity was controlled by varying the orientation of the distractor relative to the target, creating conditions where the distractor looked similar to or dissimilar from the target. This design allowed for the isolation of bottom-up effects (salience) and top-down effects (similarity) without confounding them. The results demonstrated that both relative target–distractor salience and target–distractor similarity significantly affected search performance, but they did so independently. Reaction times were longer when the distractor was more salient than the target, supporting the role of bottom-up control. Additionally, reaction times were longer when the distractor resembled the target, supporting the role of top-down control. Crucially, there was no statistical interaction between salience and similarity. This additive effect indicates that stimulus-driven and goal-driven processes do not depend on one another; rather, they contribute separately to the allocation of attention. The presence of a distractor impaired performance regardless of its salience or similarity to the target. These findings challenge existing models that propose a contingency between bottom-up and top-down control. Bottom-up models typically predict that similarity effects should depend on salience, while top-down models often suggest that salience effects should depend on goal settings. The lack of interaction suggests that neither process is contingent upon the other. Instead, the authors conclude that attentional selection is driven by two independent mechanisms that additively influence performance. This supports theoretical frameworks like Guided Search, which posit that bottom-up and top-down signals combine to guide attention, but clarifies that this combination is additive rather than interactive when stimuli share the same feature dimension.

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed.

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-25; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• visual search
• inattentional change blindness
• attention selective divided