Recent research has reported that, while both orientation contrast and collinearity increase target salience in visual search, a combination of the two counterintuitively masks a local target. Through eye-tracking and eye-movement analysis with hidden Markov models (EMHMM), here we showed that this collinear masking effect was associated with reduced eye-fixation consistency (as measured in entropy) at the central fixation cross prior to the search display presentation. As a decreased precision of saccade landing position is shown to be related to attention shift away from the saccadic target, our result suggested that the collinear masking effect may be related to attention shift to a non-saccadic-goal location in expectation of the search display before saccading to the central fixation cross. This attention shift may consequently interfere with attention capture by the collinear distractor containing the target, resulting in the masking effect. In contrast, although older adults had longer response times, more dispersed eye-movement pattern, and lower eye-movement consistency than young adults during visual search, the two age groups did not differ in the masking effect, suggesting limited contribution from ageing-related cognitive decline. Thus, participants’ pre-saccadic attention shift prior to search may be an important factor influencing their search behavior.

最近的研究报告说，虽然方向对比和共线性都增加了视觉搜索中的目标显着性，但两者的结合会违反直觉地掩盖局部目标。通过使用隐马尔可夫模型 (EMHMM) 进行眼动追踪和眼动分析，我们在这里表明，这种共线掩蔽效应与搜索显示呈现之前中心注视交叉处的注视一致性降低（以熵衡量）有关. 由于扫视着陆位置的精度降低与远离扫视目标的注意力转移有关，我们的结果表明，共线掩蔽效应可能与预期搜索显示时将注意力转移到非扫视目标位置有关在跳到中央固定十字架之前。因此，这种注意力转移可能会干扰包含目标的共线干扰物的注意力捕获，从而导致掩蔽效应。相比之下，虽然老年人在视觉搜索过程中的反应时间更长，眼动模式更分散，眼动一致性比年轻人低，但两个年龄组的掩蔽效应没有差异，表明与年龄相关的贡献有限。认知能力下降。因此，参与者在搜索前的前扫视注意力转移可能是影响他们搜索行为的重要因素。两个年龄组的掩蔽效应没有差异，表明与衰老相关的认知能力下降的贡献有限。因此，参与者在搜索前的前扫视注意力转移可能是影响他们搜索行为的重要因素。两个年龄组的掩蔽效应没有差异，表明与衰老相关的认知能力下降的贡献有限。因此，参与者在搜索前的前扫视注意力转移可能是影响他们搜索行为的重要因素。