Event-related potential (ERP) studies have suggested that Gestalt principles or grouping factors in a visual scene modulate attention deployment in early visual processing. The present study examined the effects of an extrinsic grouping factor, region commonality, on early ERP spatial attention. Effects of sex were also explored, since the processing of task-irrelvant objects may differ between the sexes. Twenty-four participants were required to discriminate one side of rapidly-presented bilateral letters, and attention effects were indexed by hemispheric lateralization accroding to attended visual fields. In results, an early P1 attention effect (70–110 ms) increased when the letters were surrounded by an object, compared to the control stimulus without a complete object, and this result was more prominent in women than in men. The present study demonstrates that visual object and sex differences play a novel role at very early cortical stages of processing in attention deployment to a task-irrelevant visual structure.

事件相关电位 (ERP) 研究表明，视觉场景中的格式塔原则或分组因素会调节早期视觉处理中的注意力部署。本研究检查了外在分组因素、区域共性对早期 ERP 空间注意力的影响。还探讨了性别的影响，因为与任务无关的对象的处理可能因性别而异。24 名参与者被要求区分快速呈现的双边字母的一侧，注意力效应通过根据参与视野的半球侧化来索引。结果表明，与没有完整物体的对照刺激相比，当字母被物体包围时，早期的 P1 注意力效应（70-110 毫秒）增加，并且这一结果在女性中比在男性中更为突出。