Selective attention is a filtering system that focuses on relevant information in our environment while irrelevant information is suppressed. The two well-known components of selective attention, facilitation and inhibition, work hand in hand to aid the processing of relevant information. The main theme of the present thesis was to study the inhibitory component of visual selective attention using stimuli such as motion and shape in a rapid serial visual presentation. Therefore, the first three experimental chapters investigated how relevant motion and shape information are processed and perceived in the presence of similar irrelevant information. The findings showed that first order visual motion detection is impaired in the presence of distracters and this inhibition of distracters is generated in a bottom-up manner. The findings were, however, not straightforward. The findings from Experiments 6-10 showed that distracter information (shape) influences shape target detection only when distracters are made salient and the perceptual load of the task is moderately difficult. Collectively, the findings in this present thesis suggest that there may be more than one kind of inhibition generated for different kinds of stimuli.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:540351 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Jayasuriya, Chaturi |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=165408 |
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