ABSTRACT

Studies suggest looming motion represents a special class of attentional capture stimulus due to behavioural urgency: the need to act upon objects moving toward us in an environment. In particular, one theory suggests that faster reaction times to targets cued by looming relative to receding motion are driven by post-attentional, motor-priming processes beyond the attentional capture effects seen with other stimulus qualities such as colour pop-out. The present study tested this theory using a relative size judgment task where targets were pre-cued by looming and receding optic flow fields. Results show systematic increases in the perceived size of targets that were cued by looming flow fields, consistent with previous attentional capture studies using onset cues. These results challenge theories attributing behavioural changes from looming motion to motor-priming alone.

摘要

研究表明，迫在眉睫的运动代表了由于行为紧迫性而引起的一类特殊的注意力捕获刺激：需要对环境中向我们移动的物体采取行动。特别是，一种理论表明，相对于后退运动，对隐约暗示的目标的更快反应时间是由后注意、运动启动过程驱动的，超出了其他刺激质量（如颜色弹出）所见的注意捕获效应。本研究使用相对大小判断任务测试了该理论，其中目标由隐现和后退的光流场预先提示。结果表明，由迫在眉睫的流场提示的目标的感知大小系统性增加，这与之前使用起始线索的注意力捕获研究一致。