The Effect Of Attention Window On Category-specific Attentional Control Setting In Conjunction Search Task

According to the contingent involuntary orienting hypothesis,only distractors who match the target characteristics can involuntarily capture attention.The attentional control are the top-down processing.According to this hypothesis,attentional control settings(ACS)can prioritize task-related information and eliminate irrelevant information,so as to search target effectively.ACS can also operate at the category level,called category-specific ACS(cACS).The study wants to explore the influence of the attentional window on two cACS in the conjunction search task.Experiment 1 and 2 use conjunction search task to explore the effect of attentional window on two cACS.Both studies defined the target as the combination of color category and shape category,thus generating color specific-category ACS(c-cACS for short)and shape specific-category ACS(s-cACS for short)in the conjunction search task.Both studies manipulate two independent variables:1.The matching level between the distractor and the target was used to investigate the effects of c-cACS and s-cACS respectively;2.The relative position of the target and the distractor can be used to separate the lateral ERP components caused by the target and the distractor.The dependent variables were accuracy and response time,as well as N2pc(attention enhancement)and PD(attention inhibition)components of ERP.The ERP results show that c-cACS and s-cACS can operate together when the attentional window is long,while only c-cACS can operate when the attention window is short.As a result,both cACSs can operate at the same time regardless of whether the attentional window is long or short.The following conclusions can be drawn:1.The results are consistent with the contingent involuntary orienting hypothesis,which proves the influence of top-down processing in attention capture.2.c-cACS will operate regardless of the long or short display.3.s-cACS only operate in the long attentional window,indicating that s-cACS is affected by the attentional window.4.According to the above results,both cACSs can operate simultaneously.5.Both c-cACS and s-cACS can operate in the behavioral results,and only c-cACS can operate in the short attentional window,presentation of the ERP results.This separation of results may indicate the difference in the early and late processing of ACS.