On the precision of goal-directed attentional selection. Academic Article

abstract

• Attention selects objects in a scene for cognitive processing. A growing body of evidence has been used to argue that observers are able to narrowly restrict attentional selection to stimuli that match a feature-based target template while ignoring similar-looking distractors. For example, visual search for a target among feature-similar nontargets is highly efficient. Here, I demonstrate that observers are substantially impaired at selecting a target among feature-similar nontargets when stimuli are compared with a target template serially in time. The results argue that goal-directed attentional selection is distinctly imprecise, and that comparing stimuli with a target template reflects an inefficient mechanism of selection that cannot fully explain visual search performance under demanding conditions.

authors

• Anderson, Brian

published proceedings

• J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform

altmetric score

• 1

author list (cited authors)

• Anderson, B. A.

citation count

• 14

complete list of authors

• Anderson, Brian A

publication date

• October 2014

publisher

• American Psychological Association (APA)  Publisher

published in

• Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance  Journal

keywords

• Adolescent
• Adult
• Attention
• Color Perception
• Female
• Goals
• Humans
• Male
• Pattern Recognition, Visual
• Space Perception
• Young Adult

PubMed Central ID

• 25111664

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1037/a0037685

start page

• 1755

end page

• 1762

volume

• 40

issue

• 5

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037685