ATTENTIONAL CONTROL WITHIN 3-D SPACE

Four experiments investigated whether directing attention to a particu lar plane in depth enables observers to filter out information from an other depth plane. Observers viewed stereoscopic displays and searched for a red line segment among green line segments. The results showed that directing attention to a particular depth plane cannot prevent at tentional capture from another depth plane when the colors of the targ et and distracter are identical. However, it can prevent attentional c apture by a singleton from another depth plane when the colors of the target and distracter are different These results indicate that only w hen both color and depth information are selective in guiding attentio n to the target singleton call attentional capture by irrelevant singl etons be prevented. The results also suggest that retinal disparity do es not have the same special status as location information in two dim ensions and should be considered as just another feature along which s election may occur.