Selective attention to orientation and closure: An event-related potential study

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded when the subjects attended selectively to stimuli in one visual field and responded to the targets including designated feature (orientation or closure) value. Attention to spatial location elicited enlarged P1 and N1 at posterior electrodes contralateral to the stimulus location, whereas selection to orientation or closure elicited selection negativity (SN) and a late negative component (LNC). The selection of spatial location was prior to the selection of orientation or closure. SN was elicited only by the stimuli in the attended visual field, suggesting that the selection of orientation and closure are contingent on the prior selection of location. Moreover, the onset latency of SN was earlier for closure selection than for orientation selection, indicating that the processing of closure occurred earlier than the processing of orientation. The results are consistent with the early-selection theories of attention and provide psycho-physiological evidence for the topology theory of visual perception.

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