Attend to it now or lose it forever: Selective attention, metacontrast masking, and object substitution

Tata, Matthew S.

doi:10.3758/bf03194754

Cited by 53 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Determining their relationships can help us reach a richer and more integrated understanding of visual information processing. Previous studies showed significant interactions between different types of masking and attention (e.g., Di Lollo et al, 2000;Ramachandran & Cobb, 1995;Tata, 2002). However, in most of these studies, the findings suffered from methodological artifacts and/or could be interpreted by alternative accounts (rather than artefactual mask-attention interaction).…”

Section: Implications For Models Of Attentionmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…In particular, the object-substitution model of masking, which was derived from the common-onset masking experimental paradigm, posited interactions between masking and attention and provided empirical evidence in support of this prediction. Other studies provided empirical evidence for maskingattention interactions in metacontrast masking (Ramachandran & Cobb, 1995;Shelley-Tremblay & Mack, 1999;Tata, 2002), raising the possibility that these interactions could be an essential component of all masking types. However, recent studies, using the common-onset masking paradigm, showed that the interaction between masking and attention was an artifact of ceiling/floor effects and provided evidence against the p r e d i c t i o n o f t h e o b j e c t s u b s t i t u t i o n m o d e l (Argyropoulos et al, 2013;Filmer et al, 2014Filmer et al, , 2015Pilling et al, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Reports of interactions between masking and attention have not been limited to the common-onset masking parad i g m , b u t a l s o i n c l u d e d m e t a c o n t r a s t m a s k i n g (Ramachandran & Cobb, 1995;Shelley-Tremblay & Mack, 1999;Tata, 2002). Hence, a question arises as to whether theories of metacontrast masking should include attention as an essential component.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Metacontrast masking and attention do not interact

Agaoglu

Breitmeyer

Öğmen

2016

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Visual masking and attention have been known to control the transfer of information from sensory memory to visual short-term memory. A natural question is whether these processes operate independently or interact. Recent evidence suggests that studies that reported interactions between masking and attention suffered from ceiling and/or floor effects. The objective of the present study was to investigate whether metacontrast masking and attention interact by using an experimental design in which saturation effects are avoided. We asked observers to report the orientation of a target bar randomly selected from a display containing either two or six bars. The mask was a ring that surrounded the target bar. Attentional load was controlled by set-size and masking strength by the stimulus onset asynchrony between the target bar and the mask ring. We investigated interactions between masking and attention by analyzing two different aspects of performance: (i) the mean absolute response errors and (ii) the distribution of signed response errors. Our results show that attention affects observers' performance without interacting with masking. Statistical modeling of response errors suggests that attention and metacontrast masking exert their effects by independently modulating the probability of Bguessing^b ehavior. Implications of our findings for models of attention are discussed.

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Section: Implications For Models Of Attentionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Metacontrast masking and attention do not interact

Agaoglu

Breitmeyer

Öğmen

2016

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…In metacontrast masking and object substitution paradigms, the magnitude of the masking effect varies in strength with attention (Ramachandran & Cobb, 1995;Enns & Di Lollo, 1997;Tata, 2002). In orientation discrimination (Morgan, Ward, & Castet, 1998), character recognition (Giesbrecht & Di Lollo, 1998), and oddball form and motion judgments (Kawahara, Di Lollo, & Enns, 2001), the magnitude of the attentional effects have been found to depend on whether backwardly masked displays are used.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mask-dependent attentional cuing effects in visual signal detection: The psychometric function for contrast

Smith

Wolfgang

Sinclair

2004

Perception & Psychophysics

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A spatial-cuing paradigm was used to test the hypothesis of Carrasco, Penpeci-Talgar, and Eckstein (2000) that the mask-dependent cuing effects found in visual signal detection by Smith (2000a) were caused by submaximal activation of the transient-orienting system. Mask-dependent cuing was found with a range of stimulus contrasts with pure peripheral cues and with the mixed central-peripheral cues of Smith (2000a), contrary to the predictions of the submaximal activation hypothesis. The use of a pedestal detection task to control spatial uncertainty showed that the cuing effect was due to signal enhancement. A model of mask-dependent cuing is described, which assumes that attention affects the rate of information accumulation from the display and that masks limit the visual persistence of the stimulus. The model correctly predicts differential mask dependencies in sensitivity for detection and discrimination and the associated patterns of response times.

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“…That is, metacontrast masking is obtained even with a centrally presented and attended target; in fact, this is the arrangement in which metacontrast masking is traditionally used (Alpern, 1952(Alpern, , 1953Breitmeyer & Ögmen, 2006). However, the magnitude of metacontrast masking increases when spatial attention is dispersed during the presentation of the target (e.g., number of distractors in the target array) and attenuated when rapid attention to the target is facilitated in such arrays (Shelley-Tremblay & Mack, 1999;Tata, 2002). While the label metacontrast masking was not used, this interaction between attention and metacontrast masking was first noticed decades ago.…”

Section: Metacontrast Maskingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Substituting objects from consciousness: A review of object substitution masking

et al. 2013

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Object substitution masking (OSM) occurs when a sparse (e.g., four-dot), temporally trailing mask obscures the visibility of a briefly presented target. Here, we review theories of OSM: those that propose that OSM reflects the interplay between feedforward and feedback/reentrant neural processes, those that predict that feedforward processing alone gives rise to the phenomenon, and theories that focus on cognitive explanations, such as object updating. We discuss how each of these theories accommodates key findings from the OSM literature. In addition, we examine the relationship between OSM and other visual-cognitive phenomena, including object correspondence through occlusion, change blindness, metacontrast masking, backward masking, and visual short-term memory. Finally, we examine the level of processing at which OSM impairs target perception. Collectively, OSM appears to reflect the conditions under which the brain confuses two visual events for one when they are encoded with low spatiotemporal resolution, due to processing resources being otherwise occupied.Keywords Object substitution masking . Attention . Reentrant processing . Consciousness When observing a visual scene, at any point in time, we are conscious of only a small fraction of the available information. Given this limitation, it is important to understand the mechanisms that determine what stimuli we become conscious of, when we become conscious of them, and the nature of processing that occurs in the absence of explicit awareness. There exists a long and rich history in experimental psychology of using visual masking to explore such issues. Visual masking refers to conditions where the visibility of one to-be-reported visual stimulus (the target) is obscured by the presentation of another stimulus (the mask) that appears in close spatiotemporal proximity and does not require report. Object substitution masking (OSM) is a recent discovery in the field of visual masking and is an ideal tool for exploring questions about visual awareness because it selectively impairs the extent to which an individual becomes conscious of a visual stimulus without the extent of image-level degradation that other forms of visual masking induce. This review, therefore, focuses on the determinants and consequences of visual awareness in OSM.Here, we integrate a diverse range of literature to discern what OSM can tell us about perceptual consciousness and visual cognition in general. Specifically, we discuss the role of feedforward versus feedback processing in giving rise to OSM, whether the phenomenon is better characterized as reflecting object updating or object substitution, the similarities and differences between OSM and other forms of masking, and OSM's relationship to other visual-cognitive phenomena. In addition, we review evidence regarding the role of attention in masking. Our aim is to address controversies in the OSM literature in depth and offer insights into how some of them may already be resolved and how the field might go about resolving ...

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Attend to it now or lose it forever: Selective attention, metacontrast masking, and object substitution

Cited by 53 publications

References 30 publications

Metacontrast masking and attention do not interact

Metacontrast masking and attention do not interact

Mask-dependent attentional cuing effects in visual signal detection: The psychometric function for contrast

Substituting objects from consciousness: A review of object substitution masking

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