Die Rolle von absichten bei der automatischen verarbeitung visuell-räumlicher reizinformation

Do we process visuospatial stimulus information in an automatic manner? Psychological experiments seem to support this assumption. Abruptly onsetting stimuli in the periphery of the visual field grab our attention even if we want to attend to another position. And stimulus position activates a response, although this position information is "irrelevant". However, a number of studies did show that these effects depend to a large extent on our intentions: Abrupt-onset stimuli capture attention mainly in those situations in which there is a good match between the search criteria of the participants and the irrelevant stimuli (or features), and response activation by stimulus position is based on the necessity to spatially discriminate between alternative responses. Thus, what appears to be automatic processing might reflect a more fundamental principle: the match of the features of the seemingly irrelevant stimuli to the intentionally selected processing criteria directed to the relevant features.