3.

6 OBJECT SELECTION,
INHIBITION AND NEGATIVE
PRIMING
RACHELLE S. RIVERA
BSPSYCHOLOGY-2B
NEGATIVE PRIMING

• Refers to the findings that the response time to

categorize a target item will be slowed if that
same item has been presented on the previous
trial as a distractor item which was to be
ignored.
 TWO PROPOSED MODELS OF
NEGATIVE PRIMING
Distractor inhibition Episodic retrieval
• According to this model when • According to this model the
we pay attention to particular ignored representation is
stimulus we perceive other associated with the memory
stimuli surrounding the target of how to act upon it.
distractor in order to help
focus.
•Tipper found that if the previously
ignored distractor item was used as the
target on the following trial, response
time was slowed relative to control
trials.
• One way of preventing irrelevant items from
controlling response is to inhibit their
representations in memory of their connection to the
response system.

IS SELECTIVITY FOR ATTENTION ‘EARLY’ OR ‘LATE’?

• A resolution of this problem was proposed by Lavie
(1995).
3.7 Directing the spotlight
of visual attention
• Posner (1980) said ‘attention can be likened to a
spotlight that enhances the efficiency of the
detection of events within its beam’.
• The spotlight analogy suggests that objects or
events in the beam of visual attention will be
highlighted for processing and easily detected,
whereas those outside the beam will not be.
THE ATTENTIONAL SPOTLIGHT
• Metaphor to describe the
spatial properties of attention.
• The spotlight moves through
the visual field.
• Things in the spotlight can be
processed more efficiently.
• Attention= limited resource
(border of spotlight).
SACCADE
• The movement of the eyes during which
information uptake is suppressed.
• A rapid movement of the eye between fixation
points.
• Directed eye movements
FIXATION
• When the fovea of the eye dwells on a location in
visual space, during which time information is
collected.

Fovea- The most sensitive part of the eye.

ORIENTING

• In the spotlight model of visual attention this

attention to regions of space that does not depends
upon eye movements.
• The ability to focus resources at a particular moment
in time in order to optimize behavior.
OVERT ATTENTIONAL
ORIENTING

• Making an eye movement to attend to a

location.
• Is the act of directing sense organs towards a
stimulus source.
COVERT ATTENTIONAL
ORIENTING

• Orienting attention without making any

movement of the eyes.
• Is the act of mentally focusing on one of several
possible sensory stimuli.
 POSNER’S ORIGINAL EXPERIMENTS
POSNER CUEING TASK
- It is a neuropsychological test often used to
assess attention.
- the personal cueing task measures how
attention can move across our visual field even
when our eyes remain fixated.
What is Visual cue?
VISUAL CUE
• Visual cues act as perceptual signals that control
where viewers look. They include explicit symbols
(like arrows) and techniques (like highlights) that are
overlaid onto a graphic to call attention to its critical
features.
There were two different kinds of cues
used: central and peripheral.

CENTRAL CUE- Presented at the central

fixation point, which was an arrow
pointing left or right.
CENTRAL CUE
PERIPHERAL CUE- A brief illumination of a
box presented to the left and right, in
peripheral vison away from the fixation
point.
PERIPHERAL CUE
ENDOGENOUS SYSTEM

• Can be controlled intentionally by the subjects’

expectations and is used to direct attention in
the central cueing condition.
EXOGENOUS SYSTEM

• Which is not under intentional control that, whether

a cue is valid or not, automatically draws attention to
the location of a change in the visual environment, as
in the peripheral cueing condition.
POSNER AND PETERSEN (1990)

• Posner and Petersen extended Posner’s original

idea of separate endogenous and exogenous
system to include three components of
controlling attention.
3 COMPONENTS OF CONTROLLING ATTENTION

1. To move attention from one location to another it

is necessary to disengage it from the current
location,
2. Shift it to the desired location and then
3. Engage it on the new visual stimulus.
CORBETTA AND SCHULMAN (2002)

• Proposed two interacting attentional system.

1. Bottom-up – Stimulus- driven pathway involved

in exogenous attention which is specialized for
detecting unexpected behaviorally relevant
stimuli, such as the falling apple.
2. TOP-DOWN – Goal-directed preparation and
control of attention involved in endogenous
attention. In this way attention can be captured
by environmental changes that might be
important, and this is of obvious evolutionary
advantage.
GAZE-MEDIATED ORIENTING
• An exogenous shift of attention following
the direction of gaze of a face presented at
fixation.
SHARED ATTENTION
• Shared attention is the shared focus of two individuals
on an object. It is achieved when one individual alerts
another to an object by means of eye-gazing, pointing
or other verbal or non-verbal indications.
 3.8 CROSS-MODAL
CUEING OF ATTENTION
MODALITY
• The processing system specific to one of the
senses, such as vision, hearing or touch.
• According to the cross-modal attention perspective,
attention often occurs simultaneously through
multiple sensory modalities. These modalities process
information from the different sensory fields, such
as: visual, auditory, spatial, and tactile.
SPENCE AND DRIVER (1996)
- They used a cross-modal version of Posner’s
cueing task.

SPENCE AND READ (2003)

- Speech shadowing while driving
- Participants found it easier to shadow
words coming from in front of them.
HO AND SPENCE (2005)
- Investigated the possible benefits of using spatial
auditory warning signals in another simulated
driving task.
- They discovered that drivers reacted more rapidly
to a critical driving event behind them.
• Other studies of cross-modal links in orienting
attention have shown that vision is usually the
dominant sense.

VENTRILOQUIST EFFECT
• the illusion that a voice appears to come
from the moving mouth of a puppet rather
than from the actual speaker
LOCAL-GLOBAL ( seeing
the wood from the trees)
• NAVON (1977) – used compound letters in which
the global and local elements were congruent or
incongruent.
• It was found that global differences were
detected more often than local differences.
3.9 VISUAL SEARCH
VISUAL SEARCH
• Visual search is a type of perceptual task requiring
attention that typically involves an active scan of the
visual environment for a particular object or feature
(the target) among other objects or features (the
distractors). Visual search can take place with or
without eye movements.
FEATURE INTEGRATION
THEORY(FIT)
• Treisman and Gelade's proposal (1980).
• According to FIT, attention is the ‘glue’ that sticks
the feature of object together.
• A theory that seeks to understand attention and
focus.
PARALLEL AND PRE-ATTENTIVE
SEARCH
• This type of feature search allows to find the object
easily.
CONJUCTION SEARCH
• Conjunction search task is a process of identifying a
desired object when it is in close proximity to objects
that share some of its same features.
3.10 EVIDENCE FOR
AND AGAINST FIT
TREISMAN AND GELADE (1980)
• Found that for conjunction search the time taken to
find a target increased linearly with the number of
distractors in the display. However, if the target was
defined by a unique feature, search time was
independent of the number of distractors.
SERIAL SEARCH
• When the object is not the target we move on to the
next one.

SERIAL SELF-TERMINATING
SEARCH
• Comparisons stop abruptly as soon as the target is
found, and then the response is generated
POP-OUT
• Is the ability to detect object among distractors in
situation which numbers of distractors presented isn’t
important.
PROBLEM WITH THE ORIGINAL
CONCEPTION OF FIT
• NEISSER AND BECKLEN (1975) - Showed that one of
two visually superimposed events could be followed
without interference from the other.
- So, contrary to original FIT, location is not the sole
factor important for selective attention.
- Furthermore, ‘pop-out’ can occur for groups of
objects.
DUNCAN AND HUMPHREYS
(1989, 1992)
• Put forward attentional engagement theory.
• They demonstrated that similarity is an important
grouping factor.
• Other experiments have shown that response
relationship between targets and distractors is
important factor in the efficiency of target selection.
LABERGE (1983) – Showed that the spotlight of
attention could change its width depending on
whether participants were told to focus on a
specific letter within a word or to attend the whole
world.

ERIKSEN (1974) – Showed that when letters flanking

a target letter share a compatible response with the
target there is less interference than when the
flanking letters have an incompatible response.
ERIKSEN AND ST.JAMES (1986)
- Suggested that visual attention was like an adjustable
zoom lens, taking in more or less information according
to task demands.
- These results are inconsistent with the original FIT.

TREISMAN (1999) – proposed a broader conception of

FIT.
- Treisman also introduced the idea of connections that
could inhibit non-target properties in a display.
TREISMAN (1993) – Also argued that selection could
be early or late depending on the concurrent load on
perception.