Conjunction search revisited.

Treisman, Anne; Sato, Sharon

doi:10.1037//0096-1523.16.3.459

Cited by 378 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…In sum, we show that decision-level mechanisms such as report bias contribute to results from the probe letter task. While we cannot rule out perceptual-level suppression, a look at the literature shows that only a small number of classical approaches include distractor inhibition as a necessary component (Treisman & Sato, 1990 ; reviewed by Dent et al, 2012 ). Rather, classic theories give more importance to mechanisms that guide attention toward target stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Does attentional suppression occur at the level of perception or decision-making? Evidence from Gaspelin et al.’s (2015) probe letter task

Kerzel

Renaud

2022

Psychological Research

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Visual attention is often inadvertently captured by salient stimuli. It was suggested that it is possible to prevent attentional capture in some search tasks by suppressing salient stimuli below baseline. Evidence for attentional suppression comes from a probe task that was interleaved with the main search task. In the probe task of Gaspelin et al. (Psychol Sci 26(11):1740–1750, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615597913), letters were shown on the stimuli of the search display and participants had to identify as many letters as possible. Performance was found to be worse for letters shown on the distractor compared to non-salient non-target stimuli, suggesting that distractor processing was suppressed below baseline. However, it is unclear whether suppression occurred at the level of perception or decision-making because participants may have reported letters on the distractor less frequently than letters on nontargets. This decision-level bias may have degraded performance for letters on distractor compared to nontarget stimuli without changing perception. After replicating the original findings, we conducted two experiments where we avoided report bias by cueing only a single letter for report. We found that the difference between distractor and nontarget stimuli was strongly reduced, suggesting that decision-level processes contribute to attentional suppression. In contrast, the difference between target and non-target stimuli was unchanged, suggesting that it reflected perceptual-level enhancement of the target stimuli.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Does attentional suppression occur at the level of perception or decision-making? Evidence from Gaspelin et al.’s (2015) probe letter task

Kerzel

Renaud

2022

Psychological Research

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“…The type of oscillating motion used was similar to that used in earlier studies by Treisman and Sato ( 1990 ), Hillstrom and Yantis ( 1994 ), and Yantis and Egeth ( 1999 ). These studies establish that oscillating motion behaves much like colour in the sense that it provides a salient featural discontinuity that can be used to rapidly and efficiently detect a target, but that when task irrelevant, it does not necessarily lead to interference, at least when search is inefficient.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Firstly, it might be that the colour singleton implemented here is a relatively weak source of interference in the context of a relatively salient conjunction target; as a result, the colour singleton does not reach the threshold required for interference, without top-down support. Secondly, it could be that feature-based weighting could take the form of down-weighting nontarget features in addition to up-weighting target features (e.g., Treisman & Sato, 1990 ; see Dent et al, 2012 , for discussion of inhibitory coding in conjunction search). Thus, the salience of the singleton with the nontarget orientation could be actively reduced by top-down weighting processes.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Essentially, spatial attention may be guided towards locations likely to contain a target and away from locations unlikely to contain a target, on the basis of known target features. According to revisions of FIT (e.g., Treisman, 1988 ; Treisman & Sato, 1990 ; Wolfe, 1994 ; Wolfe et al, 1989 ), the mechanism by which this influence is exerted is a map of space coding activation at each location in the visual field. According to the guided search approach (e.g., see Wolfe, 1994 , 2007 , 2014 , 2021 ) activation increases to the extent that each location contains target defining features, whereas revised FIT suggests locations containing nontarget features are instead inhibited (e.g., Treisman, 1988 , 2006 ; Treisman & Sato, 1990 ; see Dent et al, 2012 , for discussion).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to revisions of FIT (e.g., Treisman, 1988 ; Treisman & Sato, 1990 ; Wolfe, 1994 ; Wolfe et al, 1989 ), the mechanism by which this influence is exerted is a map of space coding activation at each location in the visual field. According to the guided search approach (e.g., see Wolfe, 1994 , 2007 , 2014 , 2021 ) activation increases to the extent that each location contains target defining features, whereas revised FIT suggests locations containing nontarget features are instead inhibited (e.g., Treisman, 1988 , 2006 ; Treisman & Sato, 1990 ; see Dent et al, 2012 , for discussion). Either way, in a conjunction search for a red X target amongst red Os and green X s, locations containing red and locations containing X s end up more highly activated than locations with distractors, and spatial attention is guided towards the target location early in search, driving efficient detection.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the role of top-down and bottom-up guidance in conjunction search: Singleton interference revisited

Dent

2023

Atten Percept Psychophys

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The current study reassessed the potential of salient singleton distractors to interfere in conjunction search. Experiment 1 investigated conjunctions of colour and orientation, using densely packed arrays that produced highly efficient search. The results demonstrated clear interference effects of singleton distractors in task-relevant dimensions colour and orientation, but no interference from those in a task-irrelevant dimension (motion). Goals exerted an influence in constraining this interference such that the singleton interference along one dimension was modulated by target relevance along the other task relevant dimension. Colour singleton interference was much stronger when the singleton shared the target orientation, and orientation interference was much stronger when the orientation singleton shared the target colour. Experiments 2 and 3 examined singleton-distractor interference in feature search. The results showed strong interference particularly from task-relevant dimensions but a reduced role for top-down, feature-based modulation of singleton interference, compared with conjunction search. The results are consistent with a model of conjunction search based on core elements of the guided search and dimension weighting approaches, whereby weighted dimensional feature contrast signals are combined with top-down feature guidance signals in a feature-independent map that serves to guide search.

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Just Say No: How Are Visual Searches Terminated When There Is No Target Present?

Chun

Wolfe

1996

Cognitive Psychology

384

382

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Conjunction search revisited.

Cited by 378 publications

References 66 publications

Does attentional suppression occur at the level of perception or decision-making? Evidence from Gaspelin et al.’s (2015) probe letter task

Does attentional suppression occur at the level of perception or decision-making? Evidence from Gaspelin et al.’s (2015) probe letter task

On the role of top-down and bottom-up guidance in conjunction search: Singleton interference revisited

Just Say No: How Are Visual Searches Terminated When There Is No Target Present?

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