Rapid Parallel Attentional Selection Can Be Controlled by Shape and Alphanumerical Category

Abstract

This is a manuscript version of the article which has been accepted for publication in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 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.

Target objects defined by a conjunction of colour and shape can be selected independently and in parallel

“…These observations suggest that colour-guided attentional selection processes can operate in parallel for multiple target objects at different locations, with each selection process following its own independent time course. Such rapid and apparently parallel attentional target selection processes are not confined to tasks where attention is guided by colour, as very similar temporal patterns of N2pc components were also found in a task with shape-defined targets, and even when targets were defined by their alphanumerical category (Jenkins, Grubert, & Eimer, 2016). …”

“…All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. This choice of sample size (n=12 after excluding three participants) was based on a power analysis that 8 employed the effect size obtained from a previous N2pc experiment in our lab (Jenkins, Grubert, & Eimer, 2016), in which the same sample size was used to compare N2pc onset latencies across multiple displays and SOA conditions in response to rapidly presented shape-defined target stimuli. 1…”

“…In a recent series of experiments (Eimer & Grubert, 2014a;Grubert & Eimer, 2015;Jenkins, Grubert, & Eimer, 2016), we used this horizontal/vertical target presentation procedure to investigate the time course of attentional selection processes in tasks where two target objects appeared in two successively presented displays that were separated by a very short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). In one study (Eimer & Grubert, 2014a), participants had to compare the identity of two colour-defined targets that were presented together with a nontarget-colour item on the opposite side, either on the horizontal or vertical midline.…”

The speed of voluntary and priority-driven shifts of visual attention.

“…This problem can be overcome by presenting one of these targets on the vertical meridian (above or below fixation). Because vertical targets do not elicit N2pc components, the N2pc will exclusively reflect the selection of the horizontal target, independently of any additional attentional processing of the vertical target object (e.g., Eimer & Grubert, 2014;Eimer, Kiss, & Nicholas, 2011;Hickey, Di Lollo, & McDonald, 2009;Hickey, McDonald, & Theeuwes, 2006;Woodman, & Luck, 1999;Eimer & Grubert, 2014;Grubert & Eimer, 2015, 2016aJenkins, Grubert, & Eimer, 2016).…”

Rapid top-down control over template-guided attention shifts to multiple objects

“…If allocating attention to a template-matching object in the first display always resulted in an inhibition of a second attentional selection process, the N2pc to target objects in the second display should have been strongly attenuated in these blocks, which was clearly not the case. Finally, and most importantly, in earlier N2pc studies that used analogous D1-D2 presentation sequences (Eimer & Grubert, 2014;Jenkins et al, in press), both displays contained task-relevant objects that had to be identified. When these two displays were separated by an SOA of 100 ms, as in the present study, target objects in the second display elicited solid N2pc components that were equal in size to the N2pc triggered by targets in the first display (as illustrated in Figure 1D).…”