People rely on various frames of reference (FORs), such as egocentric (EFOR) and intrinsic (IFOR), to represent spatial information. The present study examined electroencephalogram profiles on a two-cannon task, which could regulate the conflict of IFOR-IFOR (red cannon, blue cannon) and IFOR-EFOR (target cannon, observer), to elucidate the brain mechanisms of FOR conflict processing by using event-related potentials (ERPs). Results showed that both of the conflicts occurred in the reaction time (RT) and there was an interaction between them. ERP results showed more negative amplitudes on N2 (276-326 ms) and P3 (396- 726 ms) for IFOR-IFOR conflict of the 180° cannon angle condition and EFOR-IFOR conflict of the target cannon point-down condition. What’s more, there was also an interaction between these two conflicts on the P3 amplitudes (561-726 ms). In summary, our findings shed new light on the domain-specific conflict monitoring and domain-general executive control for the IFOR-IFOR and EFOR-IFOR conflicts.

It has been argued that people use multiple frames of reference (FORs) for representing and updating spatial relationships between objects in a complex environment. When there are conflicts among representations of multiple FORs, they compete to determine behavior. “Frame of Reference-based Map of Salience” theory (FORMS) suggests that FORs with high salience may be processed in priority. Here, we report a computational neural network model for a two-cannon task, which naturally involves multiple FORs with different levels of salience: intrinsic frame of reference (IFOR) and egocentric frame of reference (EFOR). The goal is to investigate the computational neural mechanisms underlying human spatial performance. Our simulation results fit earlier behavioral results well. The model suggests although multiple FORs may be initially represented independently, they interfere with each other by the inhibitory competition of neurons in the later process (in hidden layer) for conflict resolution. Moreover, salience may modulate the competition by prioritizing FORs with high salience levels. These results represent a connectionist support for the FORMS theory.

Object-based attention acts as people paying more attention to the stimulus within an object. There are various definitionsof the object, from the original definition at the lower processing level (e.g., the frame), to the high semantic level (e.g.,the Chinese word), to the learned level (e.g., learned object). However, few studies examined the object at the middlerepresentational level - frame of reference (FOR). Here, we modified the classical two-object task to induce two FORswith different salience by four cues in four experiments. Results consistently showed that shorter response time (RT) andlower error rates (ER) in the valid cue condition than that in the invalid cue condition. Whats more, RT was longer andER was lower in the invalid cue within the FOR of high salience condition than that in the invalid cue within the FOR oflow salience condition. Our study verified the existence of object-based attention in FORs at the representational level andoffered a new insight of the mechanism of the FOR-object-based attention.