지각과 단기 기억 수준에 발현되는 주의 효과의 공간적 연장 패턴 비교

초록

The effect of spatial attention gradually decreases as a function of the distance between the locus of attention and a target. According to this hypothesis, we tested the spatial-effect profile of visual attention when it operates on perception and memory. Experiment 1 measured accuracy of discriminating the color of a simultaneously masked target after presenting a pre-cue to either at the target location or away from the target (perception-intensive task). Experiment 2 measured accuracy of recognizing the color of several items at and around the pre-cued location (memory-intensive task). In the perception-intensive condition, the accuracy gradually dropped as the distance between the cue and target location increases. However, in the memory-intensive condition, subjects remembered only the item at the cued location. This suggests spatial attention in a memory-intensive process would operate on object-based representations. Experiment 2 showed the object-based effect observed in Experiment 1 can be also present in perception under a special circumstance. The results indicate that spatial attention can operate on object-based representations in a memory-intensive process whereas it flexibly can operate either on location-based or object-based representations in a perception-intensive process.

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