Familiarity, redundancy, and the spatial control of visual attention.

Polansky, Michael L.; Kerl, S.

doi:10.1037/0096-1523.7.1.157

Cited by 15 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Planned comparisons revealed that the main effect of lag was significant for all distractor categories (all ts Ͼ 4.10, ps Ͻ .01); participants were significantly less accurate at detecting the rotated image at Lag 2 than at Lag 8. The fact that both buildings/landscapes and distinct but nonaversively paired stimuli induced attentional blinks suggests that familiarity from the learning phase contributed to an attentional-blink effect, a finding consistent with earlier studies of spatial attention (Flowers, Polansky, & Kerl, 1981) and visual search (Diliberto, Altarriba, & Neill, 2000); of note, the greater distinctiveness within the stream of the nonconditioned birds or cars did not lead to a larger effect than familiarity alone. Importantly, in all cases participants were able to disengage attention by Lag 8, where mean accuracy was more than 90% for all distractor types.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 86%

An emotion-induced attentional blink elicited by aversively conditioned stimuli.

Smith

Most

Newsome

et al. 2006

Emotion

135

132

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The current study examines whether aversively conditioned stimuli can modulate attention to such a degree that they impair the perception of subsequently presented nonemotional targets. In the initial phase of this study, participants viewed 3 categories of photographs, 1 of which was paired with an aversive noise. Following conditioning, participants searched for a target embedded within a series of 17 rapidly presented images on each trial. Critically, a conditioned or unconditioned item from the initial phase appeared 200 ms or 800 ms before the target. At 200-ms lags but not 800-ms lags, the conditioned images impaired target detection relative to the other distractors. Thus, temporary visual deficits can be induced by otherwise neutral distractors whose aversive associations have only recently been learned.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 86%

An emotion-induced attentional blink elicited by aversively conditioned stimuli.

Smith

Most

Newsome

et al. 2006

Emotion

135

132

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…He concluded that “to some degree” the attentional movement automatically follows the presentation of a significant peripheral stimulus. A similar observation was made by Flowers, Polansky, and Kerl (1981), who noted that certain familiar visual stimuli “automatically” direct attention to particular locations within a display. In a study designed to compare internally and externally controlled covert orienting, Jonides (1981) concluded that a peripheral cue “effectively captures attention because it exploits a predisposition of the visual system to be especially sensitive to salient discontinuities off the fovea” (pp.…”

supporting

confidence: 68%

Inhibitory component of externally controlled covert orienting in visual space.

Maylor

Hockey²

1985

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

366

361

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Four experiments are reported that investigate an inhibitory effect associated with externally controlled orienting and first identified by Posner and Cohen (1980, 1984). The effect takes the form of an inability to respond quickly to a stimulus appearing in the same location in the visual periphery as a previous one that produced covert orienting. Several characteristics of the effect are revealed that eliminate possible explanations in terms of response inhibition, masking, and sensory habituation. The inhibitory component of orienting occurs whether or not the first stimulus requires a response (Experiment 1), lasts at least a second (Experiments 1, 2, and 3), affects not only the originally stimulated location but also nearby locations (Experiment 2), is determined by environmental coordinates (Experiment 3), and occurs both in the periphery and at the fovea (Experiment 4). It is concluded that inhibition may act together with an early facilitatory component (Posner & Cohen, 1984) in directing the attention and eye movement systems in order to maintain efficient spatial sampling.

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“…Yet these effects might have also appeared if on Days 1-4 subjects had been given 2,000 trials of practice in which the total stimulus population remained constant but varied stimulus-response mapping was employed. There appear to be different forms of attentional disruption during visual search (e.g., Flowers, Polansky, & Kerl, 1981). The role of automatic detection in these different forms is an open and important question.…”

Section: Day5mentioning

confidence: 99%

Aging and distraction by highly familiar stimuli during visual search.

Madden¹

1983

Developmental Psychology

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An influential theory regarding age-related changes in cognition proposes that aging is accompanied by a decreased ability to ignore irrelevant information (perceptual noise). The present experiment examined age differences in the extent to which highly familiar stimuli when used as perceptual noise could disrupt visual search performance. On Days 1-4, 10 young (M -20.3 years) and 10 older (M = 69.4 years) adults performed a search task with specific, unchanging sets of target and nontarget stimuli (letters). Performance on a subsequent search task (Day 5) was disrupted when these familiar stimuli appeared as noise items in the displays, as compared with trials on which only new, unpracticed stimuli were used. The magnitude of the distraction associated with the familiar stimuli on Day 5 was equivalent for the two age groups. However, age differences in Day-5 search performance did increase as more items in the stimulus display required inspection. Age differences in the present search task were thus influenced more by the requirement to attend to relevant information than by distraction from irrelevant information.

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Familiarity, redundancy, and the spatial control of visual attention.

Cited by 15 publications

References 27 publications

An emotion-induced attentional blink elicited by aversively conditioned stimuli.

An emotion-induced attentional blink elicited by aversively conditioned stimuli.

Inhibitory component of externally controlled covert orienting in visual space.

Aging and distraction by highly familiar stimuli during visual search.

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