空间注意系统中的动物特异性模块

Human being’s visual attentional system is the direct results of millions of years of evolutionary selection. As an adaptation to the environment, the most prominent function of attentional system is to facilitate the effective selection and subsequent processing of the most critical information and events from the environment with the aim of enhancing a given individual’s chance of passing his/her gene to the next generation. In the living environment of ancestral human beings, animals were undoubtedly one of those stimulus categories of great evolutionary significance. Since the process of animal-related information had life-or-death consequences for ancestral human beings, some researchers proposed a so-called animate monitoring hypothesis which states that there exists a category-specific module in the attentional system of human beings which specializes in the detection and frequent re-inspection of animal stimuli. Drawing on the available findings and theories regarding the inhibition-of-return effect, the present study utilized several variants of the spatial cueing paradigm to test the two main predictions of animate monitoring hypothesis：（1） animal stimuli in the environment are capable of summon attention in a reflexive way; （2） the inhibitory effect of attentional process on animal stimuli is less pronounced when compared to stimuli of other categories. The results of the present study provide supportive evidence to the existence of a category-specific module for animals in the attentional system. The present study contributes to the further understanding of the important role played by attentional mechanism in solving the critical adaptive problem faced by ancestral human beings during the course of evolution.