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Feature-based attention is known to enhance visual processing globally across the visual field, even at task-irrelevant locations. Here, we asked whether attention to object categories, in particular faces, shows similar location-independent tuning. Using EEG, we measured the face-selective N170 component of the EEG signal to examine neural responses to faces at task-irrelevant locations while participants attended to faces at another task-relevant location. Across two experiments, we found that visual processing of faces was amplified at task-irrelevant locations when participants attended to faces relative to when participants attended to either buildings or scrambled face parts. The fact that we see this enhancement with the N170 suggests that these attentional effects occur at the earliest stage of face processing. Two additional behavioral experiments showed that it is easier to attend to the same object category across the visual field relative to two distinct categories, consistent with object-based attention spreading globally. Together, these results suggest that attention to high-level object categories shows similar spatially global effects on visual processing as attention to simple, individual, low-level features.
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Holistic processing is modulated by the probability that parts contain task-congruent information
Abstract Holistic processing of face and non-face stimuli has been framed as a perceptual strategy, with classic hallmarks of holistic processing, such as the composite effect, reflecting a failure of selective attention, which is a consequence of this strategy. Further, evidence that holistic processing is impacted by training different patterns of attentional prioritization suggest that it may be a result of learned attention to the whole, which renders it difficult to attend to only part of a stimulus. If so, holistic processing should be modulated by the same factors that shape attentional selection, such as the probability that distracting or task-relevant information will be present. In contrast, other accounts suggest that it is the match to an internal face template that triggers specialized holistic processing mechanisms. Here we probed these accounts by manipulating the probability, across different testing sessions, that the task-irrelevant face part in the composite face task will contain task-congruent or -incongruent information. Attentional accounts of holistic processing predict that when the probability that the task-irrelevant part contains congruent information is low (25%), holistic processing should be attenuated compared to when this probability is high (75%). In contrast, template-based accounts of holistic face processing predict that it will be unaffected by manipulation given the integrity of the faces remains intact. Experiment 1 found evidence consistent with attentional accounts of holistic face processing and Experiment 2 extends these findings to holistic processing of non-face stimuli. These findings are broadly consistent with learned attention accounts of holistic processing.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1921415
- PAR ID:
- 10533418
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
- Volume:
- 86
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1943-3921
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 471 to 481
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-023-02738-w
