How Does Attention Alter Length Perception? A Prism Adaptation Study

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Yong-Chun Cai¹  Xian Su¹  Yu-Mei Yang¹  Yu Pan²  Lian Zhu³  Li-Juan Luo² 

[1] Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University;Laboratory of Applied Brain and Cognitive Sciences, School of Business and Management, Shanghai International Studies University;School of Journalism and Communication, Shanghai International Studies University

关键词: visual attention;    length perception;    appearance;    prism adaptation;    pseudoneglect;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02091

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

How perceived size (length) of an object is influenced by attention is in debate. Prism adaptation (PA), as a type of sensory motor adaptation, has been shown to affect performance on a variety of spatial tasks in both neglect patient and healthy individuals. It has been hypothesized that PA’s effects might be mediated by attentional mechanisms. In this study, we used PA to laterally shift spatial attention, and employed a precise psychophysical procedure to examine how the perceptual length of lines was influenced by this attentional shifting. Participants were presented with two separate lines in the left and right visual fields, and compared the length of the two lines. Forty-five healthy participants completed this line-length judgment task before and after a short period of adaptation to either left- (Experiment 1) or right-shifting (Experiment 2) prisms, or control goggles that did not shift the visual scene (Experiment 3). We found that participants initially tended to perceive the line presented in the left to be longer. This leftward bias of length perception was reduced by a short period of visuomotor adaptation to the left-deviating PA. However, for the right-shifting PA and plain glass goggles conditions, the initial length perception bias to the left line was unaffected. Mechanisms of this asymmetric effect of PA was discussed. Our results demonstrate that the length perception of a line can be influenced by a simple visuomotor adaptation, which might shift the spatial attention. This finding is consistent with the argument that attention can alter appearance.

【 授权许可】

CC BY