July 2013
Volume 13, Issue 9
Free
Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting Abstract  |   July 2013
Searching for single or multiple exemplars and categories: Electrophysiological markers of category-based attentional guidance
Author Affiliations
  • Rachel Wu
    Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester
  • Rebecca Nako
    Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London
  • Gaia Scerif
    Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
  • Martin Eimer
    Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London
Journal of Vision July 2013, Vol.13, 1249. doi:https://doi.org/10.1167/13.9.1249
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      Rachel Wu, Rebecca Nako, Gaia Scerif, Martin Eimer; Searching for single or multiple exemplars and categories: Electrophysiological markers of category-based attentional guidance. Journal of Vision 2013;13(9):1249. https://doi.org/10.1167/13.9.1249.

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      © ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present)

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Abstract

Visual search is often guided by top-down attentional templates that specify target-defining features. But search can also occur at the level of multiple objects or categories. With adults, we measured the N2pc component, an event-related potential (ERP) marker of attentional target selection in two visual search experiments where targets were defined as either one item (e.g., the letter C), multiple items (e.g., the letters C, F, and X), or categorically (e.g., any letter). Experiment 1 encouraged category-based selection by consistently presenting targets among distractors from a different category (e.g., numbers). Reaction times (RTs) were fastest and the N2pc largest during search for a single item, demonstrating that target selection is most efficient when it is guided by a feature-specific template. There were no RT and N2pc differences between the category-based search task and search for two or three items in Experiment 1, indicating that category-defined templates were used in all three tasks. In Experiment 2, a category-based search strategy was not available because letter targets were now presented among letter distractors. Search efficiency decreased as the number of candidate target letters increased, suggesting that within-category search was based on multiple templates for each target. Results demonstrate that category-based search can operate at early visual stages, and that it is more efficient than within-category search for multiple targets, but less efficient than feature-guided search.

Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013

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