The Influence Of Semantic Relevancy On Attentional Capture

Attentional capture is said to occur when an irrelevant item but unique in some dimension(i.e.,a singleton) affects the time to detect a target.This research consisted three experiments,using the cuing paradigm with the Chinese characters as experimental materials,exploring the influence of semantic relevancy on attentional capture separately.This research consisted three experiments,using the cuing paradigm.Experiment 1 used the Chinese characters instead of the western letters,the result replicated Gibson's(1998,Experiment 2),revealing that the Chinese characters could also be the experiment materials.Experiment 2 manipulated the semantic relevancy between the cue and the target,the result was,red cue captured attention as abrupt onset did,regardless whether the target was "红".Experiment 3 manipulated the semantic relevancy between the cue and the non-target item of the target display, showing that red cue still captured attention no matter what the target was.The results indicated that(1) the attentional capture could occur solely at the level of semantic processing,namely the cue captured attention when the cue and the target shared no feature property but the semantic relevancy.(2) The attentional control setting was sensitive,that was,the cue could enter the attentional control setting even though it only related with the non-target item which signaled the occurrence of the target.(3) The feature or the meaning would maintain in the whole task once it got into the attentional control setting,regardless what the target was concretely.