The Inhibitory Effect Of Mental Representations On Perceptual Information

How do we represent information internally? The translation,storage and manipulation of external information into the brain depends on billions or tens of billions of electrochemical reactions in the brain,but we also have a special ability to represent information in the brain,which we call "mental representation".Mental representation can be applied in all aspects of our lives,one of which is in the visual search process,where we can generate some mental representation to guide us to search targets.These generated mental representation are similar to but different from perceptual cues and are a fully endogenous type of information.Both mental representation and perceptual information can have an impact on visual attention,but there is a lack of conclusive evidence as to who guides attention more when both are processed simultaneously.Experiment 1 used a one-way within-subjects design with the independent variable of validity of mental representation cues to examine the effect of mental representation on the visual search task under different validity conditions and,as well as to examine the effects of the clarity of the mental representation generated by the subjects on the task outcome.The results found that(1)the validity effect of mental representation cue was significant,with the shortest mean response time for the search task in the validity condition,the longest mean response time in the invalid condition,and the medium mean response time in the neutral condition,indicating that mental representation can have a guiding effect on visual attention;(2)the main effect of clarity is significant,as the impact of mental representation generated by participants on visual search tasks increases with the clarity of the representation.This can be demonstrated and encouraged through clarity evaluation tasks,which effectively facilitate participants in completing the task of generating the mental representation.Experiment 2 used a 2(salient distractor presentation condition: presented vs.not presented)? 2(validity of mental representation cue: valid,neutral)within-subjects design to examine whether the capture of visual attention by salient distractor is influenced by the processing of mental representation.The results found that(1)the interaction between the condition of presentation of the bulging distractor and the condition of validity of the mental representation cue was significant,indicating that processing of mental representation affects the capture of visual attention by the bulging distractor;and(2)the inhibitory attentional effect resulting from suppressing salient distractors is discovered under the condition of effective mental representation,indicating that effective mental representation has a stronger ability to guide visual attention compared to salient perceptual stimuli.This suggests that the priority of mental representation is higher than perceptual information.A one-way within-subjects design combined with an eye-tracking technique was used in Experiment 3A,and the independent variables were the types of combinations of different mental representation and validity conditions of perceptual cue to examine the mutual effects of mental representation and perceptual cue when they were processed simultaneously,as well as the effects on visual attention.The results found that(1)processing of perceptual cue in both the mental representation validity and neutral conditions showed an attentional inhibition effect,indicating that processing of mental representation inhibited perceptual information from visual input at the same time;(2)In the case of invalid mental representation,task response times in the perceptual cue-valid condition were shorter than in the perceptual cue-neutral condition,suggesting that attention can flexibly adjust the way the information processed by the individual acts.A 3(validity of mental representation cue: valid,neutral,invalid)? 3(validity of perceptual cue : valid,neutral,invalid)within-subjects design was used in Experiment3 B.The inhibitory effect of mental representation on perceptual information and the nature of the inhibition were further explored by comparing the pattern of subjects’ task response time with the location of the first eye jump under different conditions in conjunction with the eye-tracking technique.The results revealed that(1)mental representations inhibited simultaneously processed perceptual information in all cases where they could guide attention,and(2)the inhibition of simultaneously processed perceptual information by mental representations was active inhibition.Based on the above,when mental representation and perceptual information are processed simultaneously,mental representation can inhibit perceptual information,and this inhibition is considered active inhibition.However,this inhibitory pattern is more often observed when mental representation can effectively guide visual attention.These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the interaction between mental representation and perceptual information,and provide new insights into research on attentional inhibition.