Attentional tracking of a moving target can be impaired by the presence of a second object, particularly if the second object is another target. One potential cause of this impairment is spatial interference. But the impairment may alternatively reflect a need to divide a finite attentional resource among targets. The performance cost of splitting a resource among targets should not be affected by the targets' proximity and should persist even at very large target separations. In contrast, spatial interference should impair performance more when the second object is near than when it is far. Here, we report six experiments that assess the effect of the separation between two targets. Within the crowding zone for target identification found by previous psychophysical literature, tracking performance improved with separation. Beyond the crowding zone, there was no evidence that increases in separation improved two-target performance, suggesting no long-range spatial interference. Unexpectedly, in the one-target condition, greater separation from other distractors reduced performance somewhat. This may reflect a configural tracking process. For the two-target condition, due to the absence of a separation effect beyond the crowding zone, at the largest separations performance at tracking two targets remained much poorer than performance tracking one target. This large additional-target cost is better explained by hemisphere-specific resource theories than by spatial interference.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.