Limits in feature-based attention to multiple colors

Abstract

Attention to a feature enhances the sensory representation of that feature. Although much has been learned about the properties of attentional modulation when attending to a single feature, the effectiveness of attending to multiple features is not well understood. We investigated this question in a series of experiments using a color-detection task while varying the number of attended colors in a cueing paradigm. Observers were shown either a single cue, two cues, or no cue (baseline) before detecting a coherent color target. We measured detection threshold by varying the coherence level of the target. Compared to the baseline condition, we found consistent facilitation of detection performance in the one-cue and two-cue conditions, but performance in the two-cue condition was lower than that in the one-cue condition. In the final experiment, we presented a 50% valid cue to emulate the situation in which observers were only able to attend a single color in the two-cue condition, and found equivalent detection thresholds with the standard two-cue condition. These results indicate a limit in attending to two colors and further imply that observers could effectively attend a single color at a time. Such a limit is likely due to an inability to maintain multiple active attentional templates for colors.