Research article summary (published 30 Aug 2001):

Symbolic control of visual attention.

Full Abstract

The present study reports four pairs of experiments that examined the role of nonpredictive (i.e., task-irrelevant) symbolic stimuli on attentional orienting. The experiments involved a simple detection task, an inhibition of return (IOR) task, and choice decision tasks both with and without attentional bias. Each pair of experiments included one experiment in which nonpredictive arrows were presented at the central fixation location and another experiment in which nonpredictive direction words (e.g., "up," "down," "left," "right") were presented. The nonpredictive symbolic stimuli affected responses in all experiments, with the words producing greater effects in the detection task and the arrows producing greater effects in the IOR and choice decision tasks. Overall, the present findings indicate that there is a strong connection between the overlearned representations of the meaning of communicative symbols and the reflexive orienting of visual attention.

Author information

Author/s: Hommel, B (B); Pratt, J (J); Colzato, L (L); Godijn, R (R);

Affiliation: Section of Experimental and Theoretical Psychology, University of Leiden, The Netherlands. hommel(-atsign-)fsw.leidenuniv.nl

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS (Psychol Sci), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2001-Sep; vol 12 (issue 5) : pp 360-5

Dates: Created 2001/09/13; Completed 2001/10/11; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 11554667, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adolescent Adult Attention Female Humans Male Orientation

Orientation Overlearning Pattern Recognition, Visual Psychophysics Reading Students - psychology Symbolism

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