How implicit spatial cues affect attentional orienting: Timing is everything Alison L. Chasteen, Davood Gozli, Katia Martin, & Jay Pratt Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada INTRODUCTION Concepts with implicit spatial meaning (e.g., "hat", "shoes", “attic”, basement”) can bias visual processing along the vertical spatial domain. However, a directional word can both interfere with and facilitate visual processing at a congruent location. Drawing on theory of event coding (2), we recently proposed (1) that interference and facilitation represent two temporal stages of the same type of processes. The present study is aimed to further test this account using the additional singleton task (3).
DISCUSSION
EXPERIMENT 1: Long cue-target asynchrony With a long delay, words facilitated processing of targets at the congruent location and increased the cost of an irrelevant salient distractor at that same location, suggesting a lingering spatial bias congruent with word meaning.
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METHOD
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EXPERIMENT 2: Short cue-target asynchrony With a short delay, directional words interfered with processing targets at the congruent location and reduced salient distractor interference, suggesting that the spatial code implicit in the word becomes temporarily unavailable for concurrent visual processing.
* Cue-target relationship prediction: Compatibility between cue and target would facilitate performance with the long SOA and interfere with performance with the short SOA. Cue-distractor relationship prediction: Compatibility between cue and distractor would interfere with performance at the long SOA while producing little or no interference at the short SOA.
With a long SOA we observed two signs that spatial attention was biased toward the location compatible with the cue: 1. Targets at the compatible location received faster responses. 2. Distractors at the compatible location produced a larger cost. With a short SOA we observed a sign of interference driven by temporary unavailability of the spatial code (2). Targets at the compatible location received slower responses. With a short SOA, no difference was observed between compatible and incompatible distractors. This means that unavailability of the spatial code may only affect concurrent visual processes that require feature integration (target discrimination). These results support the role of spatial processing in conceptual understanding (4), while also confirming the important role of timing when examining the interaction between conceptual and perceptual tasks (1). 1. 2. 3. 4.
REFERENCES
Gozli, D. G., Chasteen, A. L., & Pratt, J. (2013). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(4), 1028-1046. Hommel, B. (2004). Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(11), 494-500. Theeuwes, J. (1992). Perception & Psychophysics, 51(6), 599-606. Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Annual Reviews of Psychology, 59, 617-645.
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