Semantic activation of target congruence contingently captures attention(Summary of Awarded Presentation at the 25th Annual Meeting)

The Japanese Psychonomic Society

NII-Electronic Library Service

The JapanesePsychonomic Society

ThelapaneseJournal of 1'sychonomic Science

2007･,Vol,25,No, 2,2S5-286

Summary

ofAwarded

Presentation2P45

Semantic

activation

of

target

congruence

contingently

captures

attention

AtsunoriARIGA

and

Kazuhiko

71heUitiversity

of

Toleyo'YOKOSAWA

Contingent

attentional capture occurs when a stimulus _property captures an obseri,er's

attention, usually related tothc observer's

top-down

attentional set

for

targetdefining_properties. This study examined whether contingent attentiona] capture occurs fora stimulus _property that

does

not define_{the target}

by

itself,

but

is

congruent with thetarget-defining_property. Inan RSVP

$tream, we

defined

thetargetby acolor

(e,g.

a _{green-colored}

Japanese

Kanji

character). Beforethe

targetonset wc

_presented

a distractorthat referred tothetarget-definingcolor

(e,g.,

a white-colored

Kanjicharacter wjth the meaning "green").

We observed thatthedistractor_produced contingent attentional capture which was revealed by a deficitin identifying_the subsequent target.This

result suggested thattheattentional set

included

congruency

between

theactivated meaning and

thetarget-definingcolor todetectthe _target.

Key

words: contingent attentional capture, attentional set,

RSVP

Contingent attentionat copture isa _phenomenon in

which a given stimulus _property wiLI contingently

capture viewers' attention only totheextent that

it

matches their_top-down attentional set. For exarnplc,

in the study of Folk et aL

_(2002}

observers were

required te view an RSVP stream of lettersand search

for

a targetletter

defined

by

a specific color

(e.g.

green).Beforethetargetenset, acritical

distrac-tor was _presented,

They

observed thattheaccuracy

of targetidentificationdropped sharply when the

distractorwas the same color as thetarget-defining

color

(e.g.,

_green),whereas theaccuracy was constant

when the

distractor

was a differentcolor

(e.g.

_gray).

The

observed

deficit

in

target_processing was

inter-preted as a transient resource

depletion

caused

by

contingent attentional capture,

Le.

theneedless

selec-tionofthc

distractor

corresponding totheobserver's

current attentional set forthecolor _green,

Three thingsare notable about thefunctien of the

attentional set that

leads

tocontingent attentional capture. First,the attentional set established by observers

is

used toscan stimuli inrelation to

the

target-defining_property. Second, a focus of the

at-* _{Department of}

_Psychology,

_{The University}

of

Tokyo,

Hongo

7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo

O033

tcntionalsetcan

be

a

higher

representation activated

by

astimulus

<Barnard

et al. 2004),Third,the

atten-tionalset can be used toscan stimuli for muitip]e

dimensions, _provided that they dcfine the target

(Bacon

& Egeth,1994). These

findings

_give

rise toa

question concernjng the content of the attentional

set:

What

makes the

distractor

similar tothe target?

Inthisstudy, we _propose that the attentional set

is

characterized

by

a

tendency

toscan

for

"congruency"

between

the targetand distractor.

InthisRSVP study, we manipulated the

distractor-target congruence between the meaning and color

dimensions. The logicof our study was the same as

that

of

Folk

etal,

{2002),

We

hypothesized

that

if

the

attentional set scans the distractor-target

congru-ency, the congruent distractormay contingently

cap-ture observers' attention

{or

deplete

resources) and

may

impair

processing of the

following

target.

Experiment

1

Method Fourteen naive students _participated

in

Experiment

1.

After

the presentation of a

fixation

cross

(500

ms), the

RSVP

stream of 22

Japanese

Kanji

characters commenced

_{SOA=

1OO ms, ISI==

O

_ms).

Of

the 22 characters, 20 were white fiIIers,one was a target composed of a _green Kanji character oi

some-thingnatural

(e,g.,

A,

a valiey;

V,

a star), and one

The Japanese Psychonomic Society

NII-Electronic Library Service

The JapanesePsychonomic Society

286 The

_Japanese

_Journal

of

Psychonomic

Science

VoL25, No.2

Table 1

The mean

percent

correct.

Distractor type

D-T

Lag

1237

Congruent

79

64

71

69

Expcriment 1

Incongruent

80

69

72

72

(Green

target) Neut.ral 71 72 72 71 Congruent 75 60 70 68

Experiment

2

Incongruent

70

66

69

65

(Red

target)

Neutral

59

67

65

67

was a white Kanji character which was the

distrac-tor, The

distractor

character always _preceded the

target onset and was manipulated a$ the

factor

of

DistracLorType: congruent, incongruent, or neutral

conditions.

In

thecongruent condition

the

meaning

of the distractor was congruent with the

target-defining

color

(*k,

grecn). Inthe incongruent

con-ditionthemeaning of thedistractorwas

incongruent

with thc target-dcfiningcolor

(dift,

red). Inthe

neu-tralconditien the distractorwas a Kanjicharacter of

something natural and similar tothe

fillers.

Addi-tionally,thetern_poralintervalbetween thedistractor

and the targetonset was manipulatecl as thefactorof

Distractor-Target(D-T)Lag:either 1,2,3,or 7. The

lag refiectcd _{the post-distractor}serial _position,The

taskof the observers was to

identify

thc target char-acter, The experiment consisted of 300 trials.

Results

and Discussion The results are shown in

Table II A

3

(Distractor

Type) ×4

{D-T

Lag) two-way

ANOVA

revealed asignificant main effectof

D-T

Lag

[F(3,

39)=6.97,

_P<.OOI],

without a signMcant rnain

effect of DistractorType

[F(2,26>=O.99,

ns]. The

interaction between these factors w･as significant

[F(6,78)=3,68,

P<.O05],

Post-hoc

testsrevealed a

significantly lower targetidentificatton

for

the lag-2

condition

in

the congruent condition

[ts>2.60,

P

k'

,05].

The observers often rnissed the targetonly when

the

D-T

Lag

was

brief

in

thecongruent condition and

so demonstrated evidence of contingent attentional

capture. Probably the observcrs' attentional set

would scan forcongruency between $emantic

activa-tion by the distractorand the target-defining color.

However,

one may argue that the observers'

attcn-tionwas captured merely by the highlysalient

dis-tractorand not by the distractor-targetcongruence,

Note thatthccongruent distractor

(",

green) was

perceptually more salient than the

incongruent

one

(Sil,

red), That is,inExperiment 1thehighly salient

distractor

might capture an observer's att.entionon]y

ina bottom-up manner.

We

rejected this _possibility

inExperiment 2because the targetwas defined by a

red color,and consequently the

low-salient

distractor

was the congruent distractor.

Experiment

2

Wc used rhe sarne method as inExperiment 1

exccpt thatthetargetwas definedby a red color. A

statistical analysis revealed thattheper[ormance oi

the nineteen naive students was the same as

in

Ex-perimcnt 1

(see

Table 1).Even the low-salient

dis-tractor impaired correct identificationfor the Iag-2 conditien of the congruent condition,

Our

rcsults

thereforedemonstrate evidence ef contingent

atten-tional capture by the distractor-targetcongruence.

Conclusion

This study investigated the effect of

distractor-target congruence on contingent attcntional capture.

The observers more frequently missed the target

whcn thc meaning activated

b},

the

distractor

was congruent with the target-definingcolor. than when

itwas incongruent or neutral. We therefore_propose

that contingent attentional capture depends not only

on the target-definingproperty itself,but itisalso

related tothe "congruency" of the stimuli with the

target-defining _property, even across dimensions

(e.g.

meaning vs, color),

References

Bacon,

W,

F.

&

Egeth,

H,

E.

1994

Overriding

stimu-lus-drivenattentional capture.

Perception

&

Rsycho-Ph.ysics,

55,485-496,

Barnard, P.

J.

Scott,

S.

Taylor,

J.,

May,

J.,

&

Knight-ley,W. 2004 Paying attention tomcaning,

Rsycho-logicalScience,15,179--186.

Folk,C.L.,Leber,A.B.,& Egcth,H.E,2002 Madc _you

blink!

Contingent

attentional capture _produces a

spatial

blink.

ItircePtion& Psychophysics,64,

753.