Object-based attention: sensory modulation or priority setting?

Full Abstract

The detection of an invalidly cued target is faster when it appears within a cued object than when it appears in an uncued object equally distant from the cued location; this is a manifestation of object based attention. Five experiments are reported in which it was investigated whether early sensory enhancement (in which attention "spreads" within an attended object but stops at its borders) or a later attentional prioritization mechanism best accounts for these effects. In Experiments 1-4, subjects identified a centrally located target with a buttonpress while attempting to ignore flanking distractors that were mapped to either a compatible or an incompatible response. The flankers appeared either within the object occupied by the target or in a different object but at the same distance from the target. The well-known effect of distance between the target and the flankers on the magnitude of the compatibility effect was replicated. However, whether the target and the flankers were in the same or different objects had no effect on the magnitude of the compatibility effect. In Experiment 5, when attention could not be narrowly focused in advance, object-based modulation of the flanker effect was observed. These results suggest that object-based selection may reflect an object-specific attentional prioritization strategy, rather than object-based attentional modulation of an early sensory representation.

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Author information

Author/s: Shomstein, Sarah (S); Yantis, Steven (S);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. ssdw(-atsign-)jhu.edu

Grants: R01-MH43924 (Agency:NIMH NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Perception & psychophysics (Percept Psychophys), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jan; vol 64 (issue 1) : pp 41-51

Dates: Created 2002/03/27; Completed 2002/09/25; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 11916301, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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