Feature similarity is non-linearly related to attentional selection: Evidence from visual search and sustained attention tasks.

ABSTRACT: Although many theories of attention highlight the importance of similarity between target and distractor items for selection, few studies have directly quantified the function underlying this relationship. Across two commonly used tasks-visual search and sustained attention-we investigated how target-distractor similarity impacts feature-based attentional selection. Importantly, we found comparable patterns of performance in both visual search and sustained feature-based attention tasks, with performance (response times and d', respectively) plateauing at medium target-distractor distances (40°-50° around a luminance-matched color wheel). In contrast, visual search efficiency, as measured by search slopes, was affected by a much more narrow range of similarity levels (10°-20°). We assessed

SUBMITTER: Chapman AF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9290316 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature