Abstract
During active vision, diverse factors such as current goals, target salience, and previous experiences interactively influence performance (e.g., Leonard & Egeth, 2008). Our understanding of impaired attentional functioning in people with schizophrenia is benefited by studies designed to isolate specific components of attentional guidance. In the current study, we examine intertrial influences in people with schizophrenia and matched controls using a popout visual search task (i.e., Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994). Participants made a speeded response about the shape of a color singleton target, which was equally likely to be either a blue target object among red distractors or a red target object among blue distractors. Although the previous target color is irrelevant on the current trial, previous work has shown facilitated performance when the color of the current target repeats. We replicate that general pattern here. Critically, inverse efficiency scores, which combine accuracy and reaction time, show that people with schizophrenia are more greatly influenced by the color of the previous target than controls. In other words, they have a greater cost-benefit difference on the current trial as a result of a switched or repeated target color from the previous trial. The target color two-trials back similarly influenced both groups. Interestingly, visual working memory, as estimated in a separate task, was significantly correlated with intertrial influence, such that higher capacity individuals showed less evidence of carry-over effects. Overall, these results suggest that people with schizophrenia may be more prone to use recently attended features in the guidance of attention.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016