Competition explains limited attention and perceptual resources: Implications for perceptual load and dilution theories

Frontiers in Psychology

Volumn 4, Issue MAY, 2013, Pages

  Scalf, Paige E ^a   Torralbo, Ana ^b   Tapia, Evelina ^c   Beck, Diane M ^a,c  

^a The University of Arizona   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^c UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN   (United States)

Author keywords

Competition; Dilution; Limited capacity; Limited resources; Perceptual load

Indexed keywords

EID: 84879258147     PISSN: None     EISSN: 16641078     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00243     Document Type: Review

References (131)

1. Alvarez, G. A., and Cavanagh, P. (2005). Independent resources for attentional tracking in the left and right visual hemifields. Psychol. Sci. 16, 637-643.
2. Alvarez, G. A., and Franconeri, S. L. (2007). How many objects can you track? Evidence for a resource-limited attentive tracking mechanism. J. Vis. 7, 14.1-14.10.
3. Alvarez, G. A., Gill, J., and Cavanagh, P. (2012). Anatomical constraints on attention: hemifield independence is a signature of multifocal spatial selection. J. Vis. 12:9. doi: 10.1167/12.5.9
4. Bahcall, D. O., and Kowler, E. (1999). Attentional interference at small spatial separations. Vision Res. 39, 71-86.
5. Bahrami, B., Lavie, N., and Rees, G. (2007). Attentional load modulates responses of human primary visual cortex to invisible stimuli. Curr. Biol. 17, 509-513.
6. Bays, P. M., Wu, E. Y., and Husain, M. (2011). Storage and binding of object features in visual working memory. Neuropsychologia 49, 1622-1631.
7. Beck, D., and Lavie, N. (2005). Look here but ignore what you see: effects of distractors at fixation. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 31, 592-607.
8. Beck, D. M., and Kastner, S. (2005). Stimulus context modulates competition in human extrastriate cortex. Nat. Neurosci. 8, 1110-1116.
9. Beck, D. M., and Kastner, S. (2007). Stimulus similarity modulates competitive interactions in human visual cortex. J. Vis. 7, 19.1-19.12.
10. Beck, D. M., and Kastner, S. (2009). Top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in biasing competition in the human brain. Vision Res. 49, 1154-1165.
11. Benoni, H., and Tsal, Y. (2010). Where have we gone wrong? Perceptual load does not affect selective attention. Vision Res. 50, 1292-1298.
12. Benoni, H., and Tsal, Y. (2012). Controlling for dilution while manipulating load: perceptual and sensory limitations are just two aspects of task difficulty. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 19, 631-638.
13. Blakemore, C., and Tobin, E. A. (1972). Lateral inhibition between orientation detectors in the cat's visual cortex. Exp. Brain Res. 15, 439-440.
14. Bles, M., Schwarzbach, J., De Weerd, P., Goebel, R., and Jansma, B. M. (2006). Receptive field size-dependent attention effects in simultaneously presented stimulus displays. Neuroimage 30, 506-511.
15. Broadbent, D. E. (1958). Perception and Communication. London: Pergamon.
16. Carlson, T. A., Alvarez, G. A., and Cavanagh, P. (2007). Quadrantic deficit reveals anatomical constraints on selection. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104, 13496-13500.
17. Carmel, D., Fairnie, J., and Lavie, N. (2012). Weight and see: loading working memory improves incidental identification of irrelevant faces. Front. Psychol. 3:286. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00286
18. Cartwright-Finch, U., and Lavie, N. (2007). The role of perceptual load in inattentional blindness. Cognition 102, 321-340.
19. Chelazzi, L., Duncan, J., Miller, E. K., and Desimone, R. (1998). Responses of neurons in inferior temporal cortex during memory-guided visual search. J. Neurophysiol. 80, 2918-2940.
20. Chelazzi, L., Miller, E. K., Duncan, J., and Desimone, R. (2001). Responses of neurons in macaque area V4 during memory-guided visual search. Cereb. Cortex 11, 761-772.
21. Cherry, E. C. (1953). Some experiments on the recognition of speech with one and with two ears. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 25, 975-979.
22. Cisek, P. (2006). Integrated neural processes for defining potential actions and deciding between them: a computational model. J. Neurosci. 26, 9761-9770.
23. Cisek, P. (2007). Cortical mechanisms of action selection: the affordance competition hypothesis. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 362, 1585-1599.
24. Cisek, P. (2012). Making decisions through a distributed consensus. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 22, 927-936.
25. Cohen, A., and Ivry, R. B. (1991). Density effects in conjunction search: evidence for a coarse location mechanism of feature integration. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 17, 891-901.
26. Culham, J., Cavanagh, P., and Kanwisher, N. (2001). Attention response functions: characterizing brain areas using fMRI activation during parametric variations of attentional load. Neuron 32, 737-745.
27. DeAngelis, G. C., Robson, J. G., Ohzawa, I., and Freeman, R. D. (1992). Organization of suppression in receptive fields of neurons in cat visual cortex. J. Neurophysiol. 68, 144-163.
28. De Fockert, J., Rees, G. E., Frith, C., and Lavie, N. (2001). The role of working memory in visual selective attention. Science 291, 1803-1806.
29. De Haan, B., Karnath, H.-O., and Driver, J. (2012). Mechanisms and anatomy of unilateral extinction after brain injury. Neuropsychologia 50, 1045-1053.
30. Delvenne, J. F. (2005). The capacity of visual short-term memory within and between hemifields. Cognition 96, B79-B88.
31. Desimone, R., and Duncan, J. (1995). Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 18, 193-222.
32. Duncan, J., Humphreys, G., and Ward, R. (1997). Competitive brain activity in visual attention. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 7, 255-261.
33. Dux, P. E., Ivanoff, J., Asplund, C. L., and Marois, R. (2006). Isolation of a central bottleneck of information processing with time-resolved FMRI. Neuron 52, 1109-1120.
34. Epstein, R., and Kanwisher, N. (1998). A cortical representation of the local visual environment. Nature 392, 598-601.
35. Erickson, K. I., Colcombe, S. J., Wadhwa, R., Bherer, L., Peterson, M., Scalf, P. E., et al. (2007). Training-induced functional activation changes in dual-task processing: an fMRI study. Cereb. Cortex 17, 192-204.
36. Eriksen, B. A., and Eriksen, C. W. (1974). Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target in a non-search task. Percept. Psychophys. 16, 143-149.
37. Eriksen, C. W., and St. James, J. D. (1986). Visual attention within and around the field of focal attention: a zoom lens model. Percept. Psychophys. 40, 225-240.
38. Forster, S., and Lavie, N. (2008). Failures to ignore entirely irrelevant distractors: the role of load. J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 14, 73-83.
39. Franconeri, S. L., Alvarez, G. A., and Cavanagh, P. (2013). Flexible cognitive resources: competitive content maps for attention and memory. Trends Cogn. Sci. 17, 134-141.
40. Franconeri, S. L., Jonathan, S. V., and Scimeca, J. M. (2010). Tracking multiple objects is limited only by object spacing, not by speed, time, or capacity. Psychol. Sci. 21, 920-925.
41. Franconeri, S. L., Alvarez, G. A., and Enns, J. T. (2007). How many locations can be selected at once? J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 33, 1003-1012.
42. Gattass, R., Sousa, A. P., and Gross, C. G. (1988). Visuotopic organization and extent of V3 and V4 of the macaque. J. Neurosci. 8, 1831-1845.
43. Gazzaley, A., Cooney, J. W., McEvoy, K., Knight, R. T., and D'Esposito, M. (2005). Top-down enhancement and suppression of the magnitude and speed of neural activity. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 17, 507-517.
44. Gillebert, C. R., Dyrholm, M., Vangkilde, S., Kyllingsbaek, S., Peeters, R., and Vandenberghe, R. (2012). Attentional priorities and access to short-term memory: parietal interactions. Neuroimage 62, 1551-1562.
45. Handy, T. C., and Mangun, G. R. (2000). Attention and spatial selection: electrophysiological evidence for modulation by perceptual load. Percept. Psychophys. 62, 175-186.
46. Handy, T. C., Soltani, M., and Mangun, G. R. (2001). Perceptual load and visuocortical processing: ERP evidence for sensory-level selection. Psychol. Sci. 12, 213-218.
47. Hilimire, M. R., Mounts, J. R. W., Parks, N. A., and Corballis, P. M. (2010). Event-related potentials dissociate effects of salience and space in biased competition for visual representation. PLoS ONE 5:e12677. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012677
48. Hopf, J. M., Boehler, C. N., Luck, S. J., Tsotsos, J. K., Heinze, H. J., and Schoenfeld, M. A. (2006). Direct neurophysiological evidence for spatial suppression surrounding the focus of attention in vision. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 103, 1053-1058.
49. Intriligator, J., and Cavanagh, P. (2001). The spatial resolution of visual attention. Cogn. Psychol. 43, 171-216.
50. James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. New York, NY: Holt.
51. Jersild, A. T. (1927). Mental set and shift. Arch. Psychol. 89, 5-82.
52. Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and Effort. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
53. Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J., and Chun, M. M. (1997). The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception. J. Neurosci. 17, 4302-4311.
54. Kastner, S., De Weerd, P., Desimone, R., and Ungerleider, L. G. (1998). Mechanisms of directed attention in the human extrastriate cortex as revealed by functional MRI. Science 282, 108-111.
55. Kastner, S., De Weerd, P., Pinsk, M. A., Elizondo, M. I., Desimone, R., and Ungerleider, L. G. (2001). Modulation of sensory suppression: implications for receptive field sizes in the human visual cortex. J. Neurophysiol. 86, 1398-1411.
56. Kastner, S., Nothdurft, H. C., and Pigarev, I. (1997). Neuronal correlates of pop-out in cat striate cortex. Vision Res. 37, 371-376.
57. Kastner, S., Nothdurft, H. C., and Pigarev, I. (1999). Neuronal responses to motion and orientation contrast in cat striate cortex. Vis. Neurosci. 16, 587-600.
58. Kelley, T. A., and Lavie, N. (2010). Working memory load modulates distractor competition in primary visual cortex. Cereb. Cortex 21, 659-665.
59. Knierim, J. J., and Van Essen, D. C. (1992). Neuronal responses to static texture patterns in area V1 of the alert macaque monkey. J. Neurophysiol. 67, 961-980.
60. Kramer, A. F., Coyne, J. T., and Strayer, D. L. (1993). Cognitive function at high altitude. Hum. Factors 35, 329-344.
61. Kristjánsson, Á., and Nakayama, K. (2002). The attentional blink in space and time. Vision Res. 42, 2039-2050.
62. Lavie, N. (1995). Perceptual load as a necessary condition for selective attention. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 21, 451-468.
63. Lavie, N. (2005). Distracted and confused?: selective attention under load. Trends Cogn. Sci. 9, 75-82.
64. Lavie, N. (2006). The role of perceptual load in visual awareness. Brain Res. 1080, 91-100.
65. Lavie, N. (2010). Attention, distraction, and cognitive control under load. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 19, 143-148.
66. Lavie, N., and Cox, S. (1997). On the efficiency of visual selective attention: efficient visual search leads to inefficient distractor rejection. Psychol. Sci. 8, 395-398.
67. Lavie, N., Hirst, A., De Fockert, J. W., and Viding, E. (2004). Load theory of selective attention and cognitive control. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 133, 339-354.
68. Lavie, N., and Robertson, I. (2001). The role of perceptual load in visual neglect: rejection of ipsilesional distractors is facilitated with higher central load. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 13, 867-876.
69. Lavie, N., and Tsal, Y. (1994). Perceptual load as a major determinant of the locus of selection in visual attention. Percept. Psychophys. 56, 183-197.
70. Li, Z. (1999). Contextual influences in V1 as a basis for pop out and asymmetry in visual search. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 96, 10530-10535.
71. Li, Z. P. (2002). A saliency map in primary visual cortex. Trends Cogn. Sci. 6, 9-16.
72. Luck, S. J., Hillyard, S. A., Mangun, G. R., and Gazzaniga, M. S. (1989). Independent hemispheric attentional systems mediate visual search in split-brain patients. Nature 342, 543-545.
73. Luck, S. J., Chelazzi, L., Hillyard, S. A., and Desimone, R. (1997). Neural mechanisms of spatial selective attention in areas V1, V2, and V4 of macaque visual cortex. J. Neurophysiol. 77, 24-42.
74. Macdonald, J. S. P., and Lavie, N. (2008). Load induced blindness. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 34, 1078-1091.
75. Malach, R., Reppas, J. B., Benson, R. R., Kwong, K. K., Jiang, H., Kennedy, W. A., et al. (1995). Object-related activity revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging in human occipital cortex. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 92, 8135-8139.
76. McCarley, J. S., Mounts, J. R. W., and Kramer, A. F. (2004). Age-related differences in localized attentional interference. Psychol. Aging 19, 203-210.
77. McCarley, J. S., Mounts, J. R. W., and Kramer, A. F. (2007). Spatially mediated capacity limits in attentive visual perception. Acta Psychol. 126, 98-119.
78. Mecklinger, A., Weber, K., Gunter, T. C., and Engle, R. W. (2003). Dissociable brain mechanisms for inhibitory control: effects of interference content and working memory capacity. Brain Res. 18, 26-38.
79. Mitchell, D. J., and Cusack, R. (2008). Flexible, capacity-limited activity of posterior parietal cortex in perceptual as well as visual short-term memory tasks. Cereb. Cortex 18, 1788-1798.
80. Moore, T., and Armstrong, K. M. (2003). Selective gating of visual signals by microstimulation of frontal cortex. Nature 421, 370-373.
81. Moran, J., and Desimone, R. (1985). Selective attention gates visual processing in the extrastriate cortex. Science 229, 782-784.
82. Mounts, J. R. W., and Gavett, B. E. (2004). The role of salience in localized attentional interference. Vision Res. 44, 1575-1588.
83. Mozer, M. C., and Sitton, M. (1998). Computational modeling of spatial attention. Attention 9, 341-393.
84. Nothdurft, H. C., Gallant, J. L., and Van Essen, D. C. (1999). Response modulation by texture surround in primate area V1: correlates of 'popout' under anesthesia. Vis. Neurosci. 16, 15-34.
85. Noudoost, B., Chang, M. H., Steinmetz, N. A., and Moore, T. (2010). Top-down control of visual attention. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 20, 183-190.
86. Ohta, H., Yamada, T., Watanabe, H., Kanai, C., Tanaka, E., Ohno, T., et al. (2012). An fMRI study of reduced perceptual load-dependent modulation of task-irrelevant activity in adults with autism spectrum conditions. Neuroimage 61, 1176-1187.
87. Parks, N. A., Hilimire, M. R., and Corballis, P. M. (2011). Steady-state signatures of visual perceptual load, multimodal distractor filtering, and neural competition. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 23, 1113-1124.
88. Pashler, H. (1994). Dual-task interference in simple tasks: data and theory. Psychol. Bull. 116, 220-244.
89. Pelli, D. G. (2008). Crowding: a cortical constraint on object recognition. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 18, 445-451.
90. Pestilli, F., and Carrasco, M. (2005). Attention enhances contrast sensitivity at cued and impairs it at uncued locations. Vision Res. 45, 1867-1875.
91. Pinsk, M. A., Doniger, G. M., and Kastner, S. (2004). Push-pull mechanism of selective attention in human extrastriate cortex. J. Neurophysiol. 92, 622-629.
92. Pylyshyn, Z. W., and Storm, R. W. (1988). Tracking multiple independent targets: evidence for a parallel tracking mechanism. Spat. Vis. 3, 179-197.
93. Rafal, R., Ward, R., and Danziger, S. (2006). Selection for action and selection for awareness: evidence from hemispatial neglect. Brain Res. 1080, 2-8.
94. Raymond, J. E., Shapiro, K. L., and Arnell, K. M. (1992). Temporary suppression of visual processing in an RSVP task: an attentional blink? J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 18, 849-860.
95. Recanzone, G. H., and Wurtz, R. H. (2000). Effects of attention on MT and MST neuronal activity during pursuit initiation. J. Neurophysiol. 83, 777-790.
96. Reddy, L., Kanwisher, N. G., and VanRullen, R. (2009). Attention and biased competition in multi-voxel object representations. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 106, 21447-21452.
97. Reddy, L., and VanRullen, R. (2007). Spacing affects some but not all visual searches: implications for theories of attention and crowding. J. Vis. 7, 3.1-3.17.
98. Rees, G., Frith, C., and Lavie, N. (1997). Modulating irrelevant motion perception by varying attentional load in an unrelated task. Science 278, 1616-1619.
99. Remington, A. M., Swettenham, J. G., and Lavie, N. (2012). Lightening the load: perceptual load impairs visual detection in typical adults but not in autism. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 121, 544-551.
100. Reynolds, J. H., Chelazzi, L., and Desimone, R. (1999). Competitive mechanisms subserve attention in macaque areas V2 and V4. J. Neurosci. 19, 1736-1753.
101. Reynolds, J. H., and Heeger, D. J. (2009). The normalization model of attention. Neuron 61, 168-185.
102. Roper, Z. J. J., Cosman, J. D., and Vecera, S. P. (2013). Perceptual load corresponds with factors known to influence visual search. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. doi: 10.1037/a0031616. [Epub ahead of print].
103. Ruff, C. C., Bestmann, S., Blankenburg, F., Bjoertomt, O., Josephs, O., Weiskopf, N., et al. (2008). Distinct causal influences of parietal and frontal brain regions on activity in human retinotopic visual cortex. Cereb. Cortex 18, 817-827.
104. Ruff, C. C., Blankenburg, F., Bjoertomt, O., Bestmann, S., Freeman, E., Haynes, J. D., et al. (2006). Concurrent TMS-fMRI and psychophysics reveal frontal influences on human retinotopic visual cortex. Curr. Biol. 16, 1479-1488.
105. Sagi, D., and Julez, B. (1985). Fast noninertial shifts of attention. Spat. Vis. 1, 141-149.
106. Scalf, P. E., Banich, M. T., Kramer, A. F., Narechania, K., and Simon, C. D. (2007). Double take: parallel processing by the cerebral hemispheres reduces attentional blink. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 33, 298-329.
107. Scalf, P. E., Basak, C., and Beck, D. M. (2011a). Attention does more than modulate suppressive interactions: attending to multiple items. Exp. Brain Res. 212, 293-304.
108. Scalf, P. E., Dux, P. E., and Marois, R. (2011b). Working memory encoding delays top-down attention to visual cortex. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 23, 2593-2604.
109. Scalf, P. E., and Beck, D. M. (2010). Competition in visual cortex impedes attention to multiple items. J. Neurosci. 30, 161-169.
110. Schwartz, S., Vuilleumier, P., Hutton, C., Maravita, A., Dolan, R. J., and Driver, J. (2005). Attentional load and sensory competition in human vision: modulation of fMRI responses by load at fixation during task-irrelevant stimulation in the peripheral visual field. Cereb. Cortex 15, 770-786.
111. Shapiro, K. L., and Miller, C. E. (2011). The role of biased competition in visual short-term memory. Neuropsychologia 49, 1506-1517.
112. Shim, W., Vickery, T., Alvarez, G. A., and Jiang, Y. (2010). The number of attentional foci and their precision are dissociated in the posterior parietal cortex. Cereb. Cortex 20, 1341-1349.
113. Shim, W. M., Alvarez, G. A., and Jiang, Y. V. (2008). Spatial separation between targets constrains maintenance of attention on multiple objects. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 15, 390-397.
114. Somers, D. C., Dale, A. M., Seiffert, A. E., and Tootell, R. B. H. (1999). Functional MRI reveals spatially specific attentional modulation in human primary visual cortex. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 96, 1663-1668.
115. Spence, C., Parise, C., and Chen, Y. C. (2012). The Colavita Visual Dominance Effect. Available online at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92851/. (Accessed March 19, 2013).
116. Sperling, G. (1960). The information available in brief visual presentations. Psychol. Monogr. Gen. Appl. 74, 1-29.
117. Ståhle, L., Ståhle, E. L., Granström, E., Isaksson, S., Annas, P., and Sepp, H. (2011). Effects of sleep or food deprivation during civilian survival training on cognition, blood glucose and 3-OH-butyrate. Wilderness Environ. Med. 22, 202-210.
118. Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reaction. J. Exp. Psychol. 18, 643-662.
119. Thut, G., Nietzel, A., Brandt, S. A., and Pascual-Leone, A. (2006). Alpha-band electroencephalographic activity over occipital cortex indexes visuospatial attention bias and predicts visual target detection. J. Neurosci. 26, 9494-9502.
120. Todd, J. J., and Marois, R. (2004). Capacity limit of visual short-term memory in human posterior parietal cortex. Nature 428, 751-754.
121. Torralbo, A., and Beck, D. M. (2008). Perceptual load-induced selection as a result of local competitive interactions in visual cortex. Psychol. Sci. 19, 1045-1050.
122. Treisman, A. (1960). Contextual cues in selective listening. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 12, 242-248.
123. Tsal, Y., and Benoni, H. (2010). Diluting the burden of load: perceptual load effects are simply dilution effects. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 36, 1645-1656.
124. VanRullen, R., and Koch, C. (2003). Competition and selection during visual processing of natural scenes and objects. J. Vis. 3, 75-85.
125. Welford, A. T. (1957). Changing demands of modern work and control. Nature 179, 1058-1059.
126. West, G. L., Pun, C., Pratt, J., and Ferber, S. (2010). Capacity limits during perceptual encoding. J. Vis. 10, 14.1-14.12.
127. Wickens, C. D. (1984). "Processing resources in attention," in Varieties of Attention, eds R. Parasuraman and D. R. Davies (New York, NY: Academic Press), 63-102.
128. Wickens, C. D., Vidulich, M., and Sandry-Garza, D. (1984). Principles of S-C-R compatibility with spatial and verbal tasks: the role of display-control location and voice-interactive display-control interfacing. Hum. Factors 26, 533-543.
129. Wilson, D. E., Muroi, M., and MacLeod, C. M. (2011). Dilution, not load, affects distractor processing. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 37, 319-335.
130. Xu, Y., and Chun, M. M. (2009). Selecting and perceiving multiple objects. Trends Cogn. Sci. 13, 167-174.
131. Zipser, K., Lamme, V. A., and Schiller, P. H. (1996). Contextual modulation in primary visual cortex. J. Neurosci. 16, 7376-7389.