Visional Attentional Allocation of Top-down and Bottom-up Cues in Three-Dimensional Space

Abstract

The aim of the present experiment was to investigate visual attentional allocation of top-down and bottom-up cues in three-dimensional (3D) space. Near and far stimuli were used by a 3D attention measurement apparatus. Two experiments were conducted in order to examine top-down and bottom-up controls of visual attention. In the experiment 1, the cue about the location of a target by means of location information. In the experiment 2, color cue by brief change of color at target locations was presented. Observers were required to judge whether the target presented nearer than fixation point or further than it. The results in experiment 1 and experiment 2 show that both location and color cue have the effect on reaction time, and that shift of attention were faster from far to near than the reverse. These findings suggest that (1) attention in 3D space might be operated with both location and color controls included the depth information, (2) the shift of visual attention in 3D space has an asymmetric characteristic in depth.