Attention attenuates metacontrast masking

Dissociable Neural Activations of Conscious Visibility and Attention

“…Directing attention to the flankers enhanced the target visibility (i.e., reduced the masking effect) whereas directing attention to the masks reduced the target visibility (i.e., enhanced the masking effect). In accordance with previous behavioral studies (Boyer & Ro, 2007;Tata & Giaschi, 2004;Shelley-Tremblay & Mack, 1999;Ramachandran & Cobb, 1995), we interpreted this result as follows; when the participants additionally attended to flankers presented simultaneously with the target object, visual processing of the target object was saved from the backward masking. This resulted in the enhanced target visibility compared with the neutral (neither) situation.…”

“…We replicated the previous behavioral studies (Boyer & Ro, 2007;Shelley-Tremblay & Mack, 1999;Ramachandran & Cobb, 1995). Attention to the flankers (in horizontal row) enhanced the target visibility whereas attention to the masks (in vertical column) reduced it ( Figure 1B).…”

“…In addition to the basic task, the participants were further instructed to pay attention to the flankers, the masks, or neither before each trial. It has been shown that directing attention to the flankers reduces the masking effect (i.e., enhances target visibility) whereas directing attention to the masks increases the masking effect (i.e., attenuates target visibility; Boyer & Ro, 2007;Tata & Giaschi, 2004;Shelley-Tremblay & Mack, 1999;Ramachandran & Cobb, 1995). More precisely, in both the attend flankers and attend masks conditions, although participants are paying attention to an equal amount of visual objects (i.e., target + four flankers in attend flankers condition; target + four masks in attend masks condition), they experienced clearer visibility for the target object in the "attend flankers" condition but not in the "attend masks" condition.…”

The effect of spatial competition between object-level representations of target and mask on object substitution masking

“…A 500-ms fixation cross was presented, followed by the onset of the stimulus display and the mask. The stimulus display offset after 47 ms, and the mask offset after either 47 or 400 ms Bernstein et al, 1973Bernstein et al, , 1974Boyer & Ro, 2007;Kahneman, 1968), whereas large amounts of masking were observed in Experiment 3 under these conditions. Because of this, we conclude that the smallest mask in Experiment 3 produced the least masking due to its reduced overlap with the target and, hence, because of the spatial competition between the surfaces of the target and mask items.…”

“…Because OSM is a difference in performance between two conditions, in both of which the mask and target onset simultaneously, it cannot be attributed to the mask's interrupting early processing of the target (Turvey, 1973), since this must occur equally for the two conditions. Neither can OSM result from lateral inhibition processes in early vision, such as in metacontrast masking; unlike metacontrast masking, OSM is not influenced by distance between the adjacent contours of target and mask (Enns & Di Lollo, 1997), is completely eliminated when attention is focused on the target (Enns, 2004) as long as executive attention is not limited (Dux, Visser, Goodhew & Lipp, 2010), and is present when target and mask onset simultaneously (Bernstein, Proctor, Belcher, & Schurman, 1973Boyer & Ro, 2007;Enns & DiLollo, 1997;Kahan & Mathis, 2002;Kahneman, 1968). Di proposed that OSM is the result of an interaction between forward and backward projections of information through the visual system.…”