Does attention affect visual feature integration? Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • Two questions are investigated in this work: first, whether the integration of color and shape information is affected by attending to the stimulus location, and second, whether attending to a stimulus location enhances the perceptual representation of the stimulus or merely affects decision processes. In three experiments, subjects were briefly presented with colored letters. On most trials, subjects were precued to the stimulus location (valid cue); on some trials, a nonstimulus location was cued (invalid cue). Subjects were less likely to incorrectly combine colors and letter shapes following a valid cue. The attentional facilitation afforded by the cue was not limited to feature integration but also affected the registration of features. However, when the amount of feature information was strictly controlled, attention still affected feature integration. The results indicate that orienting attention to the location of the cue affects the quality of the perceptual representation for features and their integration.

publication date

  • August 1, 1986

Research

keywords

  • Attention
  • Visual Perception

Identity

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 0022759433

PubMed ID

  • 2943864

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 12

issue

  • 3