Disruption of visual search by the misbinding illusion(Summary of Awarded Presentation at the 31st Annual Meeting)

Abstract

In cluttered environments, attentive searching is necessary to find targets defined by a conjunction of multiple features (e.g., color and shape). Thus it has classically been assumed that the allocation of attention causes binding. In contrast, here we show a phenomenon where the causality between attention and binding is reversed; the visual processing of feature binding affects spatial shifts of attention. Subjects searched for targets with a combination of particular colors and orientations (e.g., red, vertical bars)that were embedded in peripheral areas of a search array. When a central area consisted of bars with regular color-orientation pairings, these regular pairings automatically changed perceptual bindings in the peripheral area, resulting in target omission. These results indicate that the visual system performs a rapid extrapolation of binding information spreading from center to peripheral areas, which throws off attention. Our results thus provided evidence supporting the hypothesis that binding affects attention.