Abstract
The influence of the Gestalt grouping principles of similarity, closure, and proximity on the size of the response-compatibility effect was examined in a focused attention task. In three studies, subjects responded to a centrally located target and attempted to ignore adjacent distractors. The distractors, which served as targets on other trials, could be compatible, incompatible, or neutral with respect to the response of the target. In addition, the distractors and the target could be embedded in the same object, presented in the same color, presented on different objects, or presented in different colors. The typical response-compatibility effect (B. A. Eriksen & C. W. Eriksen, 1974) was found when the target and distractors were embedded in the same object or presented in the same color. Performance was poorer when the target was surrounded by response-incompatible distractors than when it was surrounded by response-compatible distractors. However, the response-compatibility effect was eliminated-w-hen. the target and distractors were embedded in different objects, even when the distance between the items was less than.25° of visual angle. Furthermore, the response-compatibility effect was of intermediate size when the distractors were not grouped strongly with the target or with neutral flankers. The results are discussed in terms of space- and object-based models of visual attention.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andersen, G. J. (1990). Focused attention in three-dimensional space.Perception & Psychophysics,47, 112–120.
Anstis, S. M. (1974). A chart demonstrating variations in acuity with retinal position.Vision Research,14, 589–592.
Banks, W. P., Bodinger, D., &Illige, M. (1974). Visual detection accuracy and target-noise proximity.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,2, 411–414.
Banks, W. P., &Prinzmetal, W. (1976). Configurational effects in visual information processing.Perception & Psychophysics,19, 361–367.
Bashinski, H. S., &Bacharach, V. R. (1980). Enhancement of perceptual sensitivity as the result of selectively attending to spatial locations.Perception & Psychophysics,28, 241–248.
Beck, J. (1982). Textural segregation. In J. Beck (Ed.),Organization and representation in perception (pp. 285–317). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Beck, J., &Ambler, B. (1973). The effects of concentrated and distributed attention on peripheral acuity.Perception & Psychophysics,14, 225–230.
Broadbent, D. (1982). Task combination and selective intake of information.Acta Psychologica,50, 253–290.
Bundesen, C., &Pedersen, L. F. (1983). Color segregation and visual search.Perception & Psychophysics,33, 487–493.
Downing, C. J. (1988). Expectancy and visual-spatial attention: Effects on perceptual quality.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,14, 188–202.
Downing, C. J., &Pinker, S. (1985). The spatial structure of visual attention. In M. I. Posner & O. Marin (Eds.),Attention and performance XI(pp. 171–187). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Driver, J., &Baylis, G. C. (1989). Movement and visual attention: The spotlight metaphor breaks down.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception A Performance,15, 448–456.
Duncan, J. (1984). Selective attention and the organization of visual information.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,113, 501–517.
Duncan, J., &Humphreys, G. W. (1989). Visual search and stimulus similarity.Psychological Review.96, 433–458.
Egeth, H. E., Virzi, R. A., &Garbart, H. (1984). Searching for conjunctively defined targets.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,10, 32–39.
Eriksen, B. A., &Eriksen, C. W. (1974). Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task.Perception & Psychophysics,16, 143–149.
Eriksen, C. W., &Colegate, R. L. (1971). Selective attention and serial processing in briefly presented visual displays.Perception & Psychophysics,10, 321–326.
Eriksen, C. W., &Hoffman, J. E. (1972). Temporal and spatial characteristics of selective encoding from visual displays. Perception noise elements during selective encoding from visual displays.Perception & Psychophysics,14, 155–160.
Eriksen, C. W., &Rohrbalgh, J. W. (1970). Some factors determining efficiency of selective attention.American Journal of Psychology,83, 330–342.
Eriksen, C. W., &Schultz, D. W. (1979). Information processing in visual search: A continuous flow conception and experimental results.Perception & Psychophysics,25, 249–263.
Eriksen, C. W., &St. James, J. D. (1986). Visual attention within and around the field of focal attention: A zoom lens model.Perception & Psychophysics,40, 225–240.
Eriksen, C. W., &Yeh, Y.-Y. (1985). Allocation of attention in the visual field.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,11, 583–597.
Falmagne, J. C. (1968). Note on a simple fixed point property of binary mixtures.British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology,21, 131–132.
Flowers, J. H., &Wilcox, N. (1982). The effect of flanking context on visual classification: The joint contribution of interactions at different processing levels.Perception & Psychophysics,32, 581–591.
Fryklund, I. (1975). Effects of cued-set spatial arrangement and targetbackground similarity in the partial-report paradigm.Perception & Psychophysics,17, 375–386.
Garner, W. R. (1987). Location and color as cuing dimensions in contingent classification.Perception & Psychophysics,41, 202–210.
Gatti, S. V., &Egeth, H. E. (1978). Failure of spatial selectivity in vision.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,11, 181–184.
Grice, G. R., &Gwynne, J. W. (1985). Temporal characteristics of noise conditions producing facilitation and interference.Perception & Psychophysics,37, 495–501.
Harms, L., &Bundesen, C. (1983). Color segregation and selective attention in a nonsearch task.Perception & Psychophysics,33, 11–19.
Hoffman, J. E. (1980). Interaction between global and local levels of a form.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception Performance,6, 222–234.
Hoffman, J. E., Houck, M. R., McMillan, F. W., Simons, R. F., &Oatman, L. C. (1985). Event related potentials elicited by automatic targets: A dual task analysis.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,11, 50–61.
Hoffman, J. E., &Nelson, B. (1981). Spatial selectivity in visual search.Perception & Psychophysics,30, 283–290.
Hughes, H. C., &Zimba, L. D. (1985). Spatial maps of directed visual attention.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,11, 409–430.
Humphreys, G. W. (1981). Flexibility of attention between stimulus dimensions.Perception & Psychophysics,30, 291–302.
Ishihari Color Blindness Test (1989). Tokyo: Kanehara.
Jonides, J. (1983). Further toward a model of the mind’s eye’s movement.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,21, 247–250.
Jonides, J., &Mack, R. (1984). On the cost and benefit of cost and benefit.Psychological Bulletin,96, 29–44.
Kahneman, D., &Henik, A. (1977). Effects of visual grouping on immediate recall and selective attention. In S. Dornic (Ed.),Attention and performance VII (pp. 307–332). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Kahneman, D., &Henik, A. (1981). Perceptual organization and attention. In M. Kubovy & J. R. Pomerantz (Eds.),Perceptual organization (pp. 181–211). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Kahneman, D., &Treisman, A. (1984). Changing views of attention and automaticity, In R. Parasuraman & R. Davies (Eds.),Varieties of attention (pp. 29–62). New York: Academic Press.
Kahneman, D., Treisman, A., &Burkell, J. (1983). The cost of visual filtering.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,9, 510–522.
Kinchla, R. A., Solis-Macias, V., &Hoffman, J. (1983). Attending to different levels of structure in a visual image.Perception & Psychophysics,33, 1–10.
Kinchla, R. A., &Wolfe, J. M. (1979). The order of visual processing: “Top-down,” “bottom-up,” or “middle-out.”Perception & Psychophysics,25, 225–231.
Kramer, A. F., Wickens, C. D., &Donchin, E. (1985). Processing of stimulus properties: Evidence for dual-task integrality.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,11, 393–408.
LaBerge, D. (1983). Spatial extent of attention to letters in words.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,9, 371–379.
LaBerge, D., &Brown, V. (1986). Variations in size of the visual field in which targets are presented: An attentional range effect.Perception & Psychophysics,40, 188–200.
LaBerge, D., &Brown, V. (1989). Theory of operations in shape identification.Psychological Review,96, 101–124.
Lappin, J. (1967). Attention in the identification of stimuli in complex visual displays.Journal of Experimental Psychology,75, 321–328.
Ludvigh, E. (1941). Extrafoveal visual acuity as measured with Snellen test-letters.American Journal of Ophthalmology,24, 303–310.
Mangun.G. R. R., &Hillyard, S. A. (1987). The spatial allocation of visual attention as indexed by event-related brain potentials.Human Factors,29, 195–211.
Navon, D. (1977). Forest before trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception.Cognitive Psychology,9, 353–383.
Neisser, U. (1967).Cognitive Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Neisser, U., &Becklen, R. (1975). Selective looking and attending to visually specified events.Cognitive Psychology,7, 480–494.
O’Hara, W. P. (1980). Evidence in support of word unitization.Perception & Psychophysics,27, 390–402.
O’Hara, W. [P]., &,Eriksen, C. W. (1979). Word unitization examined using an interference paradigm.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,14, 81–84.
Podgorny, P., &Shepard, R. (1983). The distribution of visual attention over space.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,9, 380–393.
Pomerantz, J. R. (1981). Perceptual organization in information processing. In M. Kubovy & J. R. Pomerantz (Eds.),Perceptual organization (pp. 141–180). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Pomerantz, J. R., &Pristach, E. A. (1989). Emergent features, attention, and perceptual glue in visual form perception.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,4, 635–649.
Pomerantz, J. R., &Schwahtzberg, S. D. (1975). Grouping by proximity: Selective attention measures.Perception & Psychophysics,18, 355–361.
Posner, M. I. (1980). Orienting of attention.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,32, 3–25.
Posner, M. I., Snyder, C. R. R., &Davidson, B. J. (1980). Attention and the detection of signals.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,109, 160–174.
Prinzmetal, W., &Banks, W. P. (1977). Good continuation affects visual detection.Perception & Psychophysics,21, 389–395.
Prytulak, L. S. (1974). Good continuation revisited.Journal of Experimental Psychology,102, 773–777.
Remington, R. [W]., &Pierce, L. (1984). Moving attention: Evidence for time-invariant shifts of visual selective attention.Perception & Psychophysics,35, 393–399.
Rock, L., &Guttman, D. (1981). The effect of inattention on form perception.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,7, 275–285.
Shulman, G. L., Remington, R. W., &McLean, J. P. (1979). Moving attention through visual space.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,5, 522–526.
Shulman, G. L., Wilson, J., &Sheehv, J. B. (1985). Spatial determinants of the distribution of attention.Perception & Psychophysics,37, 59–65.
Tipper, S. P., Brehaut, J. C., &Driver, J. (1990). Selection of moving and static objects for the control of spatially directed attention.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,16, 492–504.
Treisman, A. M., &Gelade, G. (1980). A feature-integration theory of attention.Cognitive Psychology,12, 97–136.
Treisman, A. M., &Gormican, S. (1988). Feature analysis in early vision: Evidence from search asymmetries.Psychological Review,95, 15–48.
Treisman, A., Kahneman, D., &Burkell, J. (1983). Perceptual objects and the cost of filtering.Perception & Psychophysics,33, 527–532.
Treisman, A., &Sato, S. (1990). Conjunction search revisited.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,16, 459–478.
Tsal, Y., &Lavie, N. (1988). Attending to color and shape: The special rote of location in selective visual processing.Perception & Psychophysics,44, 15–21.
Wertheimer, M. (1923). Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt.Psychologische Forschung,4, 301–350.
Weymouth, F. W. (1958). Visual sensory units and the minimum angle of resolution.American Journal of Ophthalmology,46, 102–113.
Wolfe, J. M., Cave, K. R., &Franzel, S. L. (1989). A modified feature integration model for visual search.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,15, 419–433.
Yeh, Y.-Y., &Eriksen, C. W. (1984). Name codes and features in the discrimination of letter forms.Perception & Psychophysics,36, 225–233.
Yntema, D. B. (1963). Keeping track of several things at once.Human Factors,5, 7–17.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This research was supported by a grant from the Office of Naval Research (N-00014-89-J-1493) monitored by Harold Hawkins.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kramer, A.F., Jacobson, A. Perceptual organization and focused attention: The role of objects and proximity in visual processing. Perception & Psychophysics 50, 267–284 (1991). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03206750
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03206750