Target-noise separation in visual selective attention

Hagenaar, R.; Heijden, A. H. C. van der

doi:10.1016/0001-6918(86)90066-1

Cited by 50 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…In our second experiment, we showed that this reduction in interference is also obtained when the target is spatially repositioned shortly after stimulus onset (a little above or below the starting position). The duration account cannot explain this, because the target remains present within the attended small spatial area (Gatti & Egeth, 1978;Hagenaar & van der Heijden, 1986;Merikle & Gorewich, 1979). In contrast, the results are in accordance with the predictions from the Gestalt account: When the target and the distractor are separated, they are no longer perceived as one entity, and the distractor input is not automatically processed together with the target information.…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 69%

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Role of Gestalt grouping in selective attention: Evidence from the Stroop task

Lamers

Roelofs

2007

Perception & Psychophysics

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To have control over our actions, our interactions with the external world require mechanisms that selectively designate part of the available sensory information. The fact that humans detect and identify visual objects that are not relevant for a task at hand, or that even disturb the processing of a target object, indicates that selective attention does not work perfectly. Previous research has often used the color-word Stroop task to study the way in which control is exerted and under what conditions control fails. In seminal experiments, Stroop (1935) showed participants cards with color words printed in different ink colors and cards with colored patches. When the participants named the colors, they had more difficulty in naming incongruent stimuli (e.g., saying "green" to the word RED in green ink) than in naming neutral stimuli (e.g., saying "green" to the patch of green). The response latencies were longer and more errors were made when the color and the word information did not match than in the neutral condition. This finding that the word input involuntarily interferes with naming the color is very robust and has been repeated numerous times (see MacLeod, 1991, for a review of the Stroop literature). The Stroop effect demonstrates that irrelevant information may influence selective attention mechanisms.In the last 2 decades, variants of the standard Stroop task have been used to study the effects of varied exposure durations of target and distractor on selective attention mechanisms. Can separating object attributes, such as color and shape, in time help us ignore irrelevant aspects of a visual scene? This issue is addressed in the present article. First, we will summarize previous research on temporal segregation of target and distractor and will discuss different explanations for the major findings. Then, we will present three experiments that were designed to assess the relative merits of the different explanations. Finally, in the General Discussion section, we will consider the theoretical implications of our results.In a seminal unpublished study, Neumann (1986) found that when a to-be-named color bar was removed shortly (i.e., 150 msec) after the onset of a color-word Stroop stimulus, the interference effect in naming the color was reduced. This seems counterintuitive: Although only the distractor word remained in the display, responses exhibited less interference from it, as compared with the more standard situation in which both the target and the distractor stayed present until response. Thus, removing the target from the screen helps people ignore irrelevant information.In a series of experiments investigating color-color interference, La Heij, Kaptein, Kalff, and de Lange (1995) found similar, albeit somewhat contrary, results with regard to the reduced interference effect. They used a variation of the flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974), in which a target color bar presented at fixation point was enclosed by color bar distractors immediately to the left and right of the target. In the ...

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 69%

“…This was done in Experiment 2 by letting the color bar and the distractor word move away from each other. To ensure that both components stayed in the same attention area, the movement was restricted to a very small (<2º) visual angle (Gatti & Egeth, 1978;Hagenaar & van der Heijden, 1986;Wühr & Waszak, 2003).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of Gestalt grouping in selective attention: Evidence from the Stroop task

Lamers

Roelofs

2007

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…Consistent with this interpretation, Merikle and Gorewich (1979) observed no decrease of Stroop interference with increasing distance (from 0.5º to 2.5º) when letter size was increased to compensate for acuity loss. Similarly, Hagenaar and Van der Heijden (1986) observed almost identical Stroop effects when a color patch and a word were presented close (1.1º) or far (1.9º) and concluded that spatial attention does not affect processing of Stroop words.…”

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confidence: 89%

“…In summary, the reviewed studies obtained very little evidence for the idea that spatial attention can modulate the Stroop effect. As long as the distance between a relevant color patch and an irrelevant color word is less than 5º, distance variations do not seem to affect the Stroop effect (e.g., Hagenaar & Van der Heijden, 1986). Only when the distance exceeds 5º can increasing distance reduce, but not eliminate, the Stroop effect (Brown et al, 2002).…”

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confidence: 99%

Object-based attentional selection can modulate the Stroop effect

Wühr

Waszak²

2003

Memory & Cognition

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The Stroop (1935) effect is the inability to ignore a color word when the task is to report the ink color of that word (i.e., to say "green" to the word RED in green ink). The present study investigated whether object-based processing contributes to the Stroop effect. According to this view, observers are unable to ignore irrelevant features of an attended object (Kahneman & Henik, 1981). In three experiments, participants had to name the color of one of two superimposed rectangles and to ignore words that appeared in the relevant object, in the irrelevant object, or in the background. The words were congruent, neutral, or incongruent with respect to the correct color response. Words in the irrelevant object and in the background produced significant Stroop effects, consistent with earlier findings. Importantly, however, words in the relevant object produced larger Stroop effects than did the other conditions, suggesting amplified processing of all the features of an attended object. Thus, object-based processing can modulate the Stroop effect.

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“…Flanking effects, especially in peripheral vision when the distractor information is very close, are attributed to insufficient resolution due to receptor spacing or retino-cortical transmission pooling. Disturbances still occur in peripheral vision when the separation is increased (Bouma, 1970;Hagenaar & van der Heijden, 1986;Miller, 1991;Toet & Levi, 1992). They also persist with increasing separation in parafoveal and foveal vision, although these effects are more restricted for central than for peripheral vision (Leat, Li, & Epp, 1999).…”

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confidence: 99%

Negative and positive congruence effects in letters and shapes

Leeuwen

Lachmann

2004

Perception & Psychophysics

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In six experiments in which a binary classification task was used, letter and nonletter (geometrical shapes, pseudoletters, or rotated letters) targets were presented either in isolation or surrounded by a geometrical shape. The surrounding shape could be congruent or incongruent with the target. When the classification required a distinction between letters and nonletters, either explicitly (Experiments 1-3) or implicitly (Experiment 4), a negative congruence effect was obtained for letters, contrasting with a regular, positive congruence effect for nonletters. When no distinction was to be made, letters and nonletters invariably showed a positive congruence effect (Experiments 5 and 6). In particular, between Experiments 1-4 and Experiments 5 and 6, the occurrence of negative or positive congruence effects for the same stimuli depended on the task. Feature interaction, target selection, and response competition explanations were tested against a feature integration approach. The results are explained in terms of different feature integration strategies for letters and nonletters. CONGRUENCE IN LETTERS AND SHAPES909 sults of even these earliest studies cannot be understood fully on the basis of feature interaction alone. For instance, in Estes (1982), the effect of target-flanker similarity was minimal at an intermediate degree of similarity, a result Estes ascribed to the mediation of higher order processes. These processes are likely to involve task-specific factors.In particular, we may consider the role of task-specific factors in attentional target selection. Distractor information competes for selection when the perceiver is allocating attention to the target. This effect, too, will be stronger the more similar in shape the nontarget is to the target. When the stimulus is complex, the task is difficult, and distractors competing for attention may sometimes have to be suppressed while a target is selected. This provides another possible source of negative congruence effects. Accordingly, the time it takes to classify a target is longer if it is surrounded by nontargets of similar shape than if it is surrounded by ones of different shape (Bavelier, Deruelle, & Proksch, 2000;Briand, 1994;van Leeuwen & Bakker, 1995). These effects contrast with those usually obtained in more simple displays, where the time it takes to classify a target is shorter when congruent distractors surround it than when it is surrounded by incongruent ones. The latter, positive congruence effects have been studied extensively and are generally attributed to competition of late response-related processes (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974). According to the literature, these effects are characteristic of simple stimuli, because when the task is easy (Lavie, 1995), attention recruited for feature integration (Treisman & Gelade, 1980) spills over to irrelevant stimulus attributes. When these call for a response opposite to that of the target, response competition will result.In sum, the effects of irrelevant surrounding information are commonly ex...

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Target-noise separation in visual selective attention

Cited by 50 publications

References 25 publications

Role of Gestalt grouping in selective attention: Evidence from the Stroop task

Role of Gestalt grouping in selective attention: Evidence from the Stroop task

Object-based attentional selection can modulate the Stroop effect

Negative and positive congruence effects in letters and shapes

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