SELECTION OF MOVING AND STATIC OBJECTS FOR THE CONTROL OF SPATIALLY DIRECTED ACTION

Research studying visual selective attention has largely examined filtering tasks in which stationary targets are selected from stationary distractors by a physical cue such as location and identity is the reported attribute. During many interactions with the visual environment however, target stimuli are selected by what they are, whereas action is controlled by where the stimulus is located. This study demonstrates that the interference and negative priming effects observed in standard filtering tasks, which suggest that distractors are analyzed and subsequently inhibited during selection, are also observed when targets are selected on the basis of identity and spatial location is the reported attribute. Furthermore, experimental results suggest that inhibition associated with distracting objects in this new task is object-centered, so that if the object is moving through space, inhibition moves with it.