Response competition and condition competition in visual selective attention.

Examined how different attributes of objects control different functions in selective attention tasks. In filtering tasks, the criterion attribute determines which object is relevant, and the response attribute specifies the action. It is argued that a 3rd type of attribute and a 3rd function have to be distinguished: conditional attributes that specify whether an action is called for. The results of 3 experiments are reported, involving 24 undergraduates. The 1st experiment was a control experiment, and the latter 2 experiments involved a conditional attribute. In the latter 2 experiments, clear effects of the conditional attributes (condition competition) were found, and condition competition interacted with response competition