Attentional guidance by relative features: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

Abstract

Citation for published item:h¤ onhmmerD tFqF nd qruertD eF nd uerzelD hF nd fekerD FsF @PHITA 9ettentionl guidne y reltive fetures X ehviorl nd eletrophysiologil evideneF9D syhophysiologyFD SQ @UAF ppF IHUREIHVQF Further information on publisher's website: httpsXGGdoiForgGIHFIIIIGpsypFIPTRS Publisher's copyright statement: his is the epted version of the following rtileX h¤ onhmmerD tF qFD qruertD eFD uerzelD hF nd fekerD F sF @PHITAD ettentionl guidne y reltive feturesX fehviorl nd eletrophysiologil evideneF syhophysiologyD SQ@UAX IHUREIHVQD whih hs een pulished in (nl form t httpsXGGdoiForgGIHFIIIIGpsypFIPTRSF his rtile my e used for nonEommeril purposes in ordne ith iley erms nd gonditions for selfErhivingF Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Attentional guidance by relative features 2 Abstract Our ability to select task-relevant information from cluttered visual environments is widely believed to be due to our ability to tune attention to the particular elementary feature values of a sought-after target (e.g., red, orange, yellow). By contrast, recent findings showed that attention is often tuned to feature relationships, viz., features that the target has relative to irrelevant features in the context (e.g., redder, yellower; Becker, 2010). However, the evidence for such a relational account is so far exclusively based on behavioral measures that do not allow a safe inference about early perceptual processes. The present study provides a critical test of the relational account, by measuring an electrophysiological marker in the EEG of participants (N2pc) in response to briefly presented distractors (cues) that could either match the physical features of the target or its relative features. In a first experiment, the target color and non-target color was kept constant across trials. In line with a relational account, we found that only cues with the same relative color as the target were attended, regardless of whether the cues had the same physical color as the target. In a second experiment, we demonstrate that attention is biased to the exact target feature value when the target is embedded in a randomly varying context. Taken together, these results provide the first electrophysiological evidence that attention can modulate early perceptual processes differently; in a contextdependent manner vs. a context-independent manner, resulting in marked differences in the range of colors that can attract attention.Attentional guidance by relative features 3

Top-down modulation of gaze capture: Feature similarity, optimal tuning, or tuning to relative features?

“…In sum, the results of Experiment 1 are in line with previous spatial cueing studies that supported the relational account and ruled out an optimal tuning and a combined similarity-saliency account (e.g., Becker et al, 2013). With this, Experiment 1 confirms that covert visual attention (e.g., in spatial cueing; Schönhammer et al, 2016) and eye movements (e.g., Becker et al, 2014) operate on the same relational principle, thus confirming a close relationship between attention and eye movements (e.g., Deubel & Schneider, 1996).…”

We can guide search by a set of colors, but are reluctant to do it

“…The gradual decrease in fixation with color similarity is also consistent with Schönhammer, Becker, and Kerzel's (2017a) broad attentional tuning account that explains the results of their Experiment 2. That pattern contrasts with the data from their Experiment 1, and with their other experiments (Becker, 2010;Becker, Folk, & Remington, 2013;Schönhammer, Grubert, Kerzel, & Becker, 2017b) indicating that attention is often directed not to a specific color, but to the color that has a specific relation (i.e., redder) to the other colors in the display. The stimulus colors in those experiments were usually taken from a fairly narrow range that forms a line in color space.…”

Detection costs and contingent attentional capture

“…Consistent with this explanation, false alarm rates were higher in the color-onset condition than in the onset-color condition, suggesting that the similarity between cue context and target was higher. In line with the context-selection hypothesis, other studies also reported cueing costs when contextual cues and targets had the same color (Harris, Remington, & Becker, 2013;Lien, Ruthruff, & Cornett, 2010;Schönhammer, Grubert, Kerzel, & Becker, 2016). Second, the disengagement hypothesis can account for the cueing costs in the color-onset condition by assuming that the color cues caused attentional capture, rapid disengagement, and spatially specific inhibition at the time the target appeared.…”