Dimension intertrial and cueing effects in localization: support for pre-attentively weighted one-route models of saliency

Abstract

There are several alternative accounts of dimensional intertrial and cueing effects in singleton feature search tasks. Some accounts assume that these effects arise at post-selective processing stages; dual-route accounts assume them to be perceptual in nature, but coming into play only in non-spatial tasks (e.g., detection but not localization). By contrast, the Dimension Weighting Account (DWA) assumes dimensional effects to arise at pre-attentive processing stages of spatial as well as non-spatial tasks. The data available are ambiguous, permitting no clear-cut choice among these accounts. Therefore, the present study examined for early effects of dimensional weighting in a spatial task, the presence of which is only predicted by the DWA and not by post-selective or dual-route accounts. Salience is known to saturate for high feature contrast and long presentation times. Consequently, with lower bottom-up salience that still permits efficient search, dimensional weights would produce a greater modulation-if present at all. Thus, we examined localization accuracy under brief-presentation conditions in Experiment 1, and localization speed under conditions of low versus high feature contrast in Experiment 2. Both experiments revealed significant dimension intertrial and cueing effects. This strongly argues against dual-route accounts and strengthens evidence for a pre-attentive origin of these effects.

Top-down control of attention: It's gradual, practice-dependent, and hierarchically organized.

“…It assumes that the weighting of features and dimensions is hierarchically organized, such that the weighting of a particular feature will always involve an increased weighting of all features defined in the same dimension compared to features of other dimensions (see also Figure lb). This idea of top-down "hierarchical feature weighting" is supported by results of a trialby-trial symbolic precueing experiment (Müller, Reimann, & Krummenacher, 2003; see also Zehetleitner, Krummenacher, et al, 2011): The cueing benefits in this experiment were comparable regardless of whether the target was actually defined by the cued feature or rather by another feature in the same dimension; for example, when observers, in response to the cue word "red," prepared for a target defined by the color red (79% cue validity), a blue target (with a 7% likelihood) was detected almost as fast as the cued target, but faster than a target defined by left-or right-tilted orientation (each with a 7% likelihood). Similarly, Meeter and Theeuwes (2006) reported that cueing the target identity not only speeded up target detection, but also infiuenced distractor interference: distractors defined in the cued dimension (but by another feature) caused larger interference as distractors defined in another dimension (see also Schubö & Müller, 2009, for electrophysiological evidence of differential processing of intra-vs. cross-dimensional distractors).…”

Salience-Based Selection: Attentional Capture by Distractors Less Salient Than the Target

“…However, according to Maljkovic and Nakayama [47], priming effects for the orientation dimension, as an aftereffect of having been assigned the target role in the distractor experiment, should dissipate within a few trials in the baseline salience measurement. Third, stimulus salience might be different in the distractor experiment because of top-down weighting [48]–[51]. When both stimuli are presented together, as in the distractor experiment, the weight of the target might be up-modulated and that of the distractor down-modulated.…”

Dynamic Weighting of Feature Dimensions in Visual Search: Behavioral and Psychophysiological Evidence

“…The findings of Müller et al (2003; see also Zehetleitner et al, 2011) cuing study show that dimension-based processing modules can be modulated by semantic foreknowledge of the target item in a dynamic (trial-by-trial) fashion. A related question is whether a top-down attentional set affects dimension-based processing for an extended time range such as the duration of an experimental block or an entire experiment.…”