Top-down and Bottom-up Attentional Control: On the Nature of Interference from a Salient Distractor

Kim, M.S. and Cave, K.R. (1999) Top-down and Bottom-up Attentional Control: On the Nature of Interference from a Salient Distractor. Perception and Psychophysics, 61, 1009-1023.

Record type: Article

Abstract

In two experiments using spatial probes, we measured the temporal and spatial interactions between top-down control of attention and bottom-up interference from a salient distractor in visual search. The subjects searched for a square among circles, ignoring color. Probe response times showed that a color singleton distractor could draw attention to its location in the early stage of visual processing (before a 100-msec stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA]), but only when the color singleton distractor was located far from the target. Apparently the bottom-up activation of the singleton distractor's location is affected early on by local interactions with nearby stimulus locations. Moreover, probe results showed that a singleton distractor did not receive attention after extended practice. These results suggest that top-down control of attention is possible at an early stage of visual processing. In the long-SOA condition (150-msec SOA), spatial attention selected the target location over distractor locations, and this tendency occurred with or without extended practice.

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