Top-Down Control of Selective Attention: Directed Inhibition of Previewed Distractors in the Stroop Color Naming Task
Date Issued
2006
Date
2006
Author(s)
Chao, Hsuan-Fu
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
The current study investigated the effect of intentional inhibition on selective attention. Using a Stroop color naming task, a previewed condition was designed that the distractor of the upcoming Stroop stimulus was presented in advance as a cue. With the foreknowledge of the upcoming distractor, participants were instructed to inhibit this previewed distractor. Experiments 1-3 indicated that participants can benefit from distractor previewing. Color naming was faster when the distractor was previewed than when no cue or no valid cue was presented. By estimating the Stroop interference effect as the difference between the incompatible condition and the neutral condition, Experiment 4 further demonstrated that distractor previewing can decrease the Stroop interference effect. Experiments 5-10 were designed to evaluate hypotheses of distractor previewing, including facilitation of distractor processing, attending part of the cue, temporal segregation, expecting possible targets, and intentional inhibition. Experiment 5 showed significant effect of distractor viewing when incompatible and compatible trials were used. However, the benefit of distractor previewing was decreased when compatible trials were presented. Experiments 6-8 demonstrated significant effect of distractor previewing when cues and distractors differed in forms. Moreover, the benefit of distractor previewing was less when cues and distractors were different in forms than when they were identical in forms. In Experiment 9, there were conflict trials that the previewed item cued the target color rather than the distractor word. In comparison to the neutral condition, a cost was obtained for these conflict trials. Finally, the cue validity was removed in Experiment 10, and no effect of distractor previewing was observed. These results from Experiments 5-10 support the hypothesis of intentional inhibition. Using Stroop negative priming as the index of passive inhibition, intentional inhibition was compared to passive inhibition in Experiments 11-16. Experiments 11-14 showed that while passive inhibition was sensitive to short-term memory load, intentional inhibition was less sensitive to the load of short-term memory. Experiments 15-16 indicated that while the effect of intentional inhibition could last at least 6,500 ms, the effect of passive inhibition could not last as long as intentional inhibition. These results demonstrate differences between passive and intentional inhibition.
Subjects
top-down control
attentional inhibition
selective attention
Type
other
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