Lateral interactions between targets and flankers in low-level vision depend on attention to the flankers.

摘要: Detection of an oriented visual target can be facilitated by collinear flankers. Such lateral interactions are thought to reflect integrative processes in low-level vision. In past studies, the flankers were task-irrelevant, and typically assumed unattended. Here we manipulated attention directly, requiring observers judge relative alignment two while ignoring a second flanker-pair. Under identical stimulus conditions, attended produced typical interactions, but ignored did not. These data show that depend on flanking context, revealing functional consequences attentional modulation