Fig. 2: Experimental design and behavioral results.
From: Attention expedites target selection by prioritizing the neural processing of distractor features
a Participants attended to a colored hemicircle presented in the left VF (dashed line = spatial focus of attention, FOA) and reported by button press either its color (color task blocks) or the side (left/right) of its convexity (orientation task blocks). The target varied trial-by-trial unpredictably between the two blockwise-assigned target colors (i.e., between red and green, or between blue and yellow). On each trial, the color probe simultaneously presented in the right VF was randomly drawn from five colors (red, green, blue, yellow, and magenta). The effects of global feature-based attention (GFBA)—as a measure for attentional color selectivity in the visual cortex—were assessed by comparing the event-related brain response elicited by an unattended color probe as a function of whether it matched the present target (PC), the distracting alternative target color (DC), or neither of them (non-target). b Trial types. The probe (here: red) could either contain the PC, the DC (here: red probe but green target in an attend red/green block), or could represent a non-target color currently not relevant (here: red probe in an attend blue/yellow block). Behavioral performance. Shown are the percentage of correct responses c and response times d of both the color and the orientation task for all trial types. Participants (n = 22) responded highly accurately and fast across all conditions. However, the performance was slightly lower in the color task, most prominent as a response delay on trials where the probe matched the distracting alternative target color (DC, gray bars). The error bars represent the standard error of the mean (SEM). Black, gray and brown dots represent data points of individual participants.
