Searching for two feature singletons in the visual scene: the localized attentional interference effect |
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Authors: | Ping Wei Jianguo Lü Hermann J Müller Xiaolin Zhou |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China;(2) Department of Psychology, Mianyang Normal College, Sichuan, 621000, China;(3) Department of Psychology, LMU München, 80802 Munich, Germany |
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Abstract: | The localized attentional interference (LAI) effect was investigated in a visual search task requiring participants to simultaneously
monitor two spatially separated features from the same or different dimensions. In Experiment 1, the search type was blocked
and targets were defined by fixed feature values in two dimensions (e.g., a yellow item and a circular item). In contrast,
in Experiment 2, participants had to look for a color and a form singleton, with the exact feature values varying randomly
across trials. In both experiments, reaction times (RTs) were generally slower when two features were CLOSE to, rather than
DISTANT from, each other. Moreover, RTs to CLOSE stimuli increased as the search set size increased, while RTs to DISTANT
stimuli were unaffected by set size. Experiment 3 also used a singleton search task, but with the two singletons defined either
in different dimensions or in the same dimension. A larger interference effect for CLOSE, as compared to DISTANT, stimuli
was found for cross-dimension than for intra-dimension targets. These findings suggest that neighboring items, irrespective
of whether these items are from the same or different dimensions, interfere with each other in attentional selection, and
that searching for two cross-dimension targets may engage a process of dimension switching to effectively solve the ambiguity
of each item, especially when these items are close to each other. |
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Keywords: | Visual search Feature search Singleton search Localized attentional interference Dimension weighting |
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