The role of priming in conjunctive visual search

Kristjánsson, Árni; Wang, DeLiang; Nakayama, Ken

doi:10.1016/s0010-0277(02)00074-4

Cited by 182 publications

(227 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The results for the six-letter displays, in contrast, are more consistent with the Maljkovic and Nakayama (1994) and Kristjánsson et al (2002) view that the top-down effect is accounted for entirely by repetition priming. This difference between the display sizes is surprising because none of the previous studies of top-down guidance noted any variation in the guidance effect (explicit or implicit) as a function of display size.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 85%

Adult Age Differences in the Implicit and Explicit Components of Top-Down Attentional Guidance During Visual Search.

Madden¹,

Whiting²,

Spaniol³

et al. 2005

Psychology and Aging

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Two experiments investigated adult age differences in the explicit (knowledge-based) and implicit (repetition priming) components of top-down attentional guidance during discrimination of a target singleton. Experiment 1 demonstrated an additional contribution of explicit top-down attention, relative to the implicit effect of repetition priming, which was similar in magnitude for younger and older adults. Experiment 2 examined repetition priming of target activation and distractor inhibition independently. The additional contribution of explicit top-down attention, relative to the repetition priming of distractor inhibition, was greater for older adults than for younger adults. The results suggest that some forms of top-down attentional control are preserved as a function of adult age and may operate in a compensatory manner. Keywordsaging; selective attention; reaction time; perception; cognition Identifying a target item in a visual display involves guiding attention to that item and determining that it possesses the features sufficient for a detection response. Attentional guidance can be either top-down, in the sense of depending primarily on the observer's goals and knowledge of the task structure, or bottom-up, in the sense of being relatively more determined by the local properties of the visual display (Wolfe, 1998;Yantis, 1998). Top-down attention is essential in complex search tasks, as when, for example, the target is a conjunction of different features occurring in the distractors (e.g., finding a T among Ls and Fs). In this case, one must know what one is looking for. In contrast, when the target differs from the distractors in a unique feature (e.g., a T among Os), the target pops out of the display visually in a bottom-up (stimulus-driven) manner.Most forms of visual search represent the combined influence of top-down and bottom-up attentional processing, and even in relatively simple tasks there can be a contribution of topdown attention. Bravo and Nakayama (1992) demonstrated a top-down effect during detection and discrimination of a color singleton. The target, for example, could be a red diamond among green diamond distractors, with the task being the determination of whether the left or right side of the target was cut off. These authors found that the unique color of the singleton provided

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 85%

Adult Age Differences in the Implicit and Explicit Components of Top-Down Attentional Guidance During Visual Search.

Madden¹,

Whiting²,

Spaniol³

et al. 2005

Psychology and Aging

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“…It should be noted that the increased sensitivity due to priming that we observed in our experiments (and in, e.g., Maljkovic and Nakayama, 1994;Kristjansson et al, 2002;Pinto et al, 2005) is unlike the more the traditional response priming (e.g., Bertelson, 1965;Pashler & Baylis, 1991), in which the facilitation of performance is due to priming of the probable response. In those experiments, performance improves because priming allows the advanced preparation of the most likely response.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 40%

The role of spatial and nonspatial information in visual selection

Theeuwes¹,

Burg²

2006

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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Even though it is undisputed that prior information regarding the location of a target affects visual selection, the issue of whether information regarding nonspatial features, such as color and shape, has similar effects has been a matter of debate since the early 1980s. In the study described in this article, measures derived from signal detection theory were used to show that perceptual sensitivity is affected by a top-down set for spatial information but not by a top-down set for nonspatial information. This indicates that knowing where the target singleton is affects perceptual selectivity but that knowing what it is does not help selectivity. Furthermore, perceptual sensitivity can be enhanced by nonspatial features, but only through a process related to bottom-up priming. These findings have important implications for models of visual selection.

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“…These results provide strong evidence for intertrial priming. Kristjansson et al (2002) argued that knowing all the target features on a given trial does not facilitate conjunction search. More importantly they claimed that, in addition to priming, there are no benefits for top-down guidance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%