TY - JOUR
T1 - Attentional guidance in singleton search
T2 - An examination of top-down, bottom-up, and intertrial factors
AU - Leonard, Carly J.
AU - Egeth, Howard E.
N1 - Funding Information:
Please address all correspondence to Carly Leonard, Psychological & Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA. E-mail: carly@jhu.edu This work was supported by an NIH training grant EY07143 to CJL. Thanks go to Chip Folk, Andrew Leber, Amy Shelton, and Steve Yantis, as well as Brian Goolsby, Chris Olivers, Jeremy Wolfe, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on the manuscript.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - While it is clear that the goals of an observer change behaviour, their role in the guidance of visual attention has been much debated. In particular, there has been controversy over whether top-down knowledge can influence attentional guidance in search for a singleton item that is already salient by a bottom-up account (Theeuwes, Reimann, & Mortier, 2006). One suggestion is that passive intertrial priming accounts for what has been called top-down guidance (e.g., Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994). In the present study, participants responded to the shape of a singleton target among homogenous distractors in a trial-by-trial cueing design. We examined the influence of target expectancy, trial history, and target salience (which was manipulated by changing the number of distractors). Top-down influence resulted in fast RTs that were independent of display size, even on trials that received no priming. Our findings show there is a role for top-down guidance, even in singleton search. The designation of intertrial priming as a bottom-up factor, rather than an implicit top-down factor (Wolfe, Butcher, Lee, & Hyle, 2003), is also discussed.
AB - While it is clear that the goals of an observer change behaviour, their role in the guidance of visual attention has been much debated. In particular, there has been controversy over whether top-down knowledge can influence attentional guidance in search for a singleton item that is already salient by a bottom-up account (Theeuwes, Reimann, & Mortier, 2006). One suggestion is that passive intertrial priming accounts for what has been called top-down guidance (e.g., Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994). In the present study, participants responded to the shape of a singleton target among homogenous distractors in a trial-by-trial cueing design. We examined the influence of target expectancy, trial history, and target salience (which was manipulated by changing the number of distractors). Top-down influence resulted in fast RTs that were independent of display size, even on trials that received no priming. Our findings show there is a role for top-down guidance, even in singleton search. The designation of intertrial priming as a bottom-up factor, rather than an implicit top-down factor (Wolfe, Butcher, Lee, & Hyle, 2003), is also discussed.
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U2 - 10.1080/13506280701580698
DO - 10.1080/13506280701580698
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:56449120575
SN - 1350-6285
VL - 16
SP - 1078
EP - 1091
JO - Visual Cognition
JF - Visual Cognition
IS - 8
ER -