Selective attention in the speeded classification and comparison of multidimensional stimuli

Santee, Jeffrey L.; Egeth, Howard E.

doi:10.3758/bf03204375

Cited by 43 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…However, if subjects automatically encode and maintain the relations, responses when the relations are constant across the stimuli should be faster and more accurate than responses when the relations change. Such facilitation from the congruence of the irrelevant dimension has been found on same responses in a number of studies using multidimensional stimuli (e.g., Besner & Coltheart, 1975;Garner, 1988;Hawkins & Shigley, 1972;Miller & Bauer, 1981;Santee & Egeth, 1980; for a review, see Farell, 1985). Similar reasoning can be applied to the obligatory nature of the retention of part information for subjects told to respond same when the relations remain the same across the two parts, regardless of whether the parts were the same (see the Part-Instruction column in Figure 1).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The stimuli were in the spirit of those used in examining the processing of multidimensional stimuli (e.g., Garner, 1974;Santee & Egeth, 1980) and in the processing of few-element figures within the global/local paradigm (e.g., Kimchi, 1988Kimchi, , 1992Navon, 1977;Pomerantz, 1983). More specifically, there were four possible relations, constructed by connecting a subset of dots from an invisible 3 X 3 matrix.…”

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, for subjects instructed to make judgments solely on the basis of the parts ofthe object, different responses to stimuli with different parts could be more difficult when the same relation holds across the stimuli (as in the same-relation condition), relative to when the relation also differs across the stimuli (as in the no-same condition). However, the results from a number of studies examining the influence of irrelevant stimuli on different responses have been inconsistent (see Farell, 1985;Garner, 1988), with many studies showing no such effects or diminished effects (e.g., Besner & Coltheart, 1975;Kimchi, 1988;Miller & Bauer, 1981;Santee & Egeth, 1980). Thus, the influence of encoding and maintaining relational information across a saccade on the eye movement trials and within a fixation on the no eye movement trials was expected for same responses, but perhaps not for different responses.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Memory for relational information across eye movements

Carlson-Radvansky

1999

Perception & Psychophysics

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Structural descriptions are hierarchical representations of a visual stimulus in terms of its parts and their relations, Previous research in which the retention of parts was examined has shown that structural descriptions can be used to represent information in transsaccadic memory, In three experiments, this idea was tested further by examining whether relational information is also maintained across saccades. Experiment 1, in which a same/different comparison task was used, showed that both part and relation information are retained across fixations in the same manner as within a fixation. Experiment 2 showed that such retention is impervious to instruction. Finally, Experiment 3, in which a new set of stimuli was used, demonstrated that both coordinate and categorical relations are maintained across saccades, The results indicate that structural descriptions can be used to represent information in transsaccadic memory in a manner similar to their use in visual short-term memory.The visual world extends before us in all directions, but our eyes only pick up information from a limited portion of this expanse at anyone time. To accommodate for this limitation, we make eye movements, in order to select particular objects or regions ofinterest. Periods oftime in which the eyes are in motion are called saccades, and the intake of visual information during saccades is actively suppressed by the visual system (see, e.g., Matin, 1974). This restricts visual information input to periods of time in which the eyes are relatively still, called fixations. Despite this discontinuous input, we perceive the world as familiar (e.g., not filled with novel to-be-identified objects with each fixation) and stable (e.g., objects do not appear to move, even though their retinal positions change). How this perception of a stable visual world is achieved is a classical question in visual perception.One approach to addressing this issue has been to examine the retention of information in transsaccadic memory (e.g., Irwin, 1991), a memory store that preserves information from one fixation for use during subsequent fixations. The general methodology used to examine transsaccadic memory employs the saccade-contingent display change technique, pioneered by McConkie and Rayner (1975), which isolates the presentation of a stimulus to a single fixation. For example, a figure is presented during a single eye fixation, and a saccade is elicited; upon the detection of the saccade onset, the first figure is erased, and a second figure is presented during the next eye fixation. The subject's task usually involves a comparative judgment about the two figures. This task requires transsaccadic memory, because the first figure is no longer present when the second figure appears (Irwin, 1992a).Using such a paradigm, research has demonstrated that visual information is retained in transsaccadic memory (see Irwin, 1992b;Pollatsek & Rayner, 1992, for reviews). For example, using a picture-naming paradigm, Pollatsek, Rayner, and Collins (1984) presented s...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Memory for relational information across eye movements

Carlson-Radvansky

1999

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…No such result was obtained for any dimension in either experiment, so there was no clear evidence that selective attention was possible for any of these dimensions and thus that any pair of dimensions was either symmetrically or asymmetrically separable. Before interpreting this result in a strong form, however, it should be pointed out that recent research by Santee and Egeth (1980) failed to show separability of dimensions with the same-different procedure even for dimensions that had shown separability, as evidenced by selective attention in a classification task. It is thus not clear how classification and comparison methods provide evidence concerning dimensional interaction.…”

Section: Selective Attentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical and cognitive dimensions in stimulus comparison

Garner

Podgorny

Frasca

1982

Perception & Psychophysics

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Two experiments were carried out using a same-different task with sets of four stimuli varying orthogonally in three dimensions. Sameness was defined by each of the three dimensions in turn, as well as by physical identity. Two types of dimensions, physical and cognitive, were studied. In Experiment 1, the numerals 6, 10, VI, and X, which vary in Length, System, and Name, were used. With simultaneous presentation, order of difficulty was from the physical dimension of Length to the cognitive dimension of Name. While overall difficulty was related to dimensional discriminability, internal evidence suggested that Name was not a dimension in the same sense as Length is, and that some stimulus pairs were simply easier to process than others, regardless of the response required (e.g., short stimulus pairs and Arabic numerals). With sequential presentation, Name was processed as fast as System, due largely to the fact that much faster responding occurred when an Arabic numeral was the second stimulus. Thus, with sequential presentation, Name provides a processing mechanism not provided by physical dimensions. In Experiment 2, the numerals 3, 4, 6, and 7, which vary in Magnitude, Oddness, and Curvilinearity, were used. The cognitive dimension of Magnitude was processed most rapidly, and numerical distance between pairs of numbers dominated the results for "same" responses, regardless of the sameness rule used. Again, evidence was found for fast processing of some stimulus pairs (e.g., 3 4), regardless of the response required. Overall, these experiments are interpreted as indicating that cognitive factors such as stimulus familiarity may override as~ts of physical discriminability with many dimensions and stimuli, that, even though a cognitive dimension can be used to generate a logically proper set of stimuli, it does not necessarily act as other, more physical dimensions do, and that clarification of the functional role of a dimension is more important than attempts to locate stages.Stimulus comparison techniques such as the samedifferent task have been used quite commonly to establish levels or hierarchies of processing, starting with the Posner and Mitchell (1967) research, with more recent research well reviewed in Posner (1978). The most frequently used stimulus materials have been visual letters, with the rule for sameness varied to manipulate the presumptive level of processing. To illustrate, in the Posner and Mitchell (1967) experiments, upper-and lowercase letters were used,

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“…However, it is unfortunate that unlike S responses, D responses have not shown a systematic increase in RTs with increasing disparity in many of experiments (e. g., Besner & Coltheart, 1976;Carpenter & Just, 1978;Dixon & Just, 1978;Just & Carpenter, 1976;Santee & Egeth, 1980;Shepard & Metzler, 1971). In addition, Williams (1974) and Watanabe (1988) found that D RTs were shorter than S RTs when form was used as relevant and color as irrelevant.…”

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confidence: 99%

Effect of the amount of the irrelevant disparity on <I>different</I> reaction times

Watanabe

1988

Jpn. Psychol. Res

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The effects of the amount of the irrelevant disparity on RTs in the different trials were examined. In the experiment, six subjects (undergraduate students) were instructed to report same or different according to a relevant dimension, trying to ignore an irrelevant dimension. There were six task-conditions to each of which one of six possible combinations of one relevant and one irrelevant dimensions selected from form, size, and orientation were allocated. It was found that in the combination of size and orientation, RTs in different trials decreased with the amount of the irrelevant disparity while in the other combinations, RTs in the different trials were not influenced by the amount of the irrelevant disparity. A two-stage model that had been suggested by Watanabe (1988) could well explain these results, according to which the degree of integrality between dimensions was one of the factors that determined RTs in the different trials.

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Selective attention in the speeded classification and comparison of multidimensional stimuli

Cited by 43 publications

References 34 publications

Memory for relational information across eye movements

Memory for relational information across eye movements

Physical and cognitive dimensions in stimulus comparison

Effect of the amount of the irrelevant disparity on <I>different</I> reaction times

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