Selection history modulates the limit of visual awareness in color perception

Selection history contributes to suboptimal attention strategies

Attentional control balances the competing drives of performance maximization and effort minimization. One way the attention system minimizes effort is through a bias to persist in the use of attentional control strategies that have been useful in the past. In the present study, we asked whether such selection history can result in the persistence of an attentional control strategy that is counterproductive, effectively competing with a more optimal strategy. Participants first completed a training in which one color target was encountered more frequently than another, and then completed a test phase in which they could search for one of two targets on any given trial, one of which would be more optimal to search for given the distribution of color stimuli. An attentional bias for the more frequent target color was observed in the training phase and the choice of which target to report was robustly optimal in the test phase, reflecting performance maximization. Importantly, participants also exhibited a tendency to report the target rendered in the previously more frequent target color in the test phase, even when the distribution of non-target colors made it suboptimal to do so. Our findings shed light on the fundamental question of why attentional control is sometimes suboptimal, demonstrating a role for selection history in the perseveration of previously employed attentional strategies even when such strategies produce suboptimal performance.

The role of processing efficiency and selection history in the limit of visual awareness in shape perception

A growing body of research indicates that the limit in instant conscious awareness, or the unit of access, for some object features such as color, orientation, and direction of motion is more than one. In four experiments we explored the roles of processing efficiency and selection history in shape perception. Two targets, which were geometric shapes (less efficient) or alphabet letters (more efficient), were shown simultaneously or sequentially. The task was to judge whether a test probe matched one of the targets. In different experiments, the two types of trials were presented in separate blocks, interleaved couplets, or randomly within the same block during testing but regrouped in data analyses such that the same type of trials was either repeated or not repeated. Accuracy was higher in the sequential than simultaneous trials for geometric shapes, but not for upright letters, when the same trial type was blocked or in the repeated condition. These results suggest that processing efficiency and selection history both play a role in the unit of access in shape perception. They also underscore the flexibility of the visual system, which uses different factors to maximize conscious visual perception at a given time.