Abstract
Attentional control is known to have two components of top-down control and bottom-up control. Almost all preceding studies have been conducted to examine these two controls in two-dimensional space. However, our behavioural world is three-dimensional (3-D) space. In this study, two experiments were conducted in order to examine top-down and bottom-up controls of attention in three-dimensional space when observers were moving forward. In the experiment 1, the information about the location of a target by means of top-down cue and three moving conditions (static, slow, and fast) were used. In the experiment 2, bottom-up cue by brief change of luminance at target locations was presented in two moving conditions. Observers were required to judge whether the target presented nearer than fixation point or further than it. The results in exp. 1 and exp. 2 show that both top-down and bottom-up cue have the effect on reaction time, and that shift of attention were faster from far to near than the reverse. These findings suggest that (1) attention in 3-D space might be operated with both top-down and bottom-up controls included the depth information, (2) the shift of attention in 3-D space has asymmetric characteristic in depth and it remarkably shown in observers were moving conditions. In addition, the results indicate that top-down and bottom-up controls do not operate independently, and top-down control might modulate bottom-up control in 3-D space.