December 2022
Volume 22, Issue 14
Open Access
Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting Abstract  |   December 2022
Does semantic processing explain divided attention effects for judging multiple objects?
Author Affiliations & Notes
  • Dina Popovkina
    University of Washington
  • John Palmer
    University of Washington
  • Cathleen Moore
    University of Iowa
  • Geoffrey Boynton
    University of Washington
  • Footnotes
    Acknowledgements  Supported in part by Grants from the National Eye Institute (F32 EY030320 to D.V.P. and EY12925 to G.M.B.).
Journal of Vision December 2022, Vol.22, 3738. doi:https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.22.14.3738
  • Views
  • Share
  • Tools
    • Alerts
      ×
      This feature is available to authenticated users only.
      Sign In or Create an Account ×
    • Get Citation

      Dina Popovkina, John Palmer, Cathleen Moore, Geoffrey Boynton; Does semantic processing explain divided attention effects for judging multiple objects?. Journal of Vision 2022;22(14):3738. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.22.14.3738.

      Download citation file:


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

      ×
  • Supplements
Abstract

Judgments of multiple simultaneously presented stimuli can produce a variety of divided attention effects. For example, participants can detect colors in two locations as well as in one, but can recognize only one masked word at a time (White, Palmer, & Boynton, Psych Science 2018). Recent work has revealed a divided attention effect for the categorization of two simultaneously presented objects (Popovkina, Palmer, Moore, & Boynton, JoV 2021). In that study, participants saw two nameable objects followed by a mask. They were asked to judge the semantic category of one of the objects (single-task condition) or both of the objects (dual-task condition). The difference in performance (dual-task deficit) approached the large deficit expected for serial processing of only one object per trial. We asked whether this dual-task deficit can be attributed to processing the semantic meaning. If semantic processing produces the dual-task deficit, then a task with abstract objects should produce no such deficit. Alternatively, if some aspect of visual processing produces the dual-task deficit, then abstract objects should also produce the deficit. In particular, we considered the hypothesis that processing multiple interchangeable parts within an object (e.g. letters in a word) might produce the dual-task deficit. The stimulus set consisted of 210 photos of objects constructed from 3 of 7 possible parts (Duplo blocks). Participants performed a probe recognition task with single- and dual-task conditions. The task was to recognize the presented objects, and distractors consisted of objects with the same parts in a different arrangement. Preliminary results show a large dual-task deficit for judging two abstract multipart objects. These results suggest that the divided attention effect associated with multiple objects is not restricted to tasks requiring semantic processing. It is also found for tasks requiring processing of objects with multiple interchangeable parts.

×
×

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

Sign in or purchase a subscription to access this content. ×

You must be signed into an individual account to use this feature.

×