The Effect Of Category Composition On The Time Course Of Pre-activation Of Category Attention Template

Category-based attentional template(CAT)refers to the process by which the attentional system is directed and selects category information when the target is defined as a category.It enables individuals to effectively and quickly select and process relevant stimuli.Previous research has mostly explored the processing intensity and time course of CAT during the attentional selection stage after the target appears.However,recent studies have shown that CAT can also be pre-activated before the appearance of the target.Despite these findings,there has been little investigation into the time course of CAT’s pre-activation.Categories can be formed based on prototypical or semantic,and exploring the differences in pre-activation time course between these different category framework can provide further evidence for CAT.To investigate whether different category framework affect the time course of CAT pre-activation,two EEG experiments were conducted using the rapid sequential probe presentation(RSPP)paradigm.The target category was defined as a prototypical-based warm-cool color category and a letter-digit category based on semantic.Each experiment controlled the degree of matching between the probes and the target category(matching or mismatching).In a follow-up study to explore the specific features activated by CAT in Experiment 1,the spatial cuing paradigm was used to define the target as having prototype,mean,or neutral features,and the degree of match between the cue and target feature was controlled(matching or mismatching).The findings are as follows:(1)There is a difference in the CAT’s pre-activation time course between two types of category framework,indicating that the framework of categories can modulate the pre-activation time course of CAT.(2)In the CAT’s action stage,the main effect of category framework was significant,with the prototypical-based CAT guiding attention more efficiently than the semantic-based CAT.(3)Based on the results of the pre-activation and action stages of the two types of CAT,two different activation modes were proposed.Prototypical-based categories adopt a prototype activation mode,while semantic-based categories adopt a semantic activation mode.(4)The main effect of feature type was not significant,indicating that different feature types do not differ in their ability to guide attentional search.In summary,the study results confirmed that the framework of categories can modulate the pre-activation time course of CAT,and there was no difference in attention guidance strength between different features.These findings provides further evidence for the processing and mechanisms of attentional orientation at the category level.