Attentional capture: An ameliorable side-effect of searching for salient targets

Liesefeld, Heinrich René; Liesefeld, Anna M.; Müller, Hermann J.

doi:10.1080/13506285.2021.1925798

Cited by 19 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(29 reference statements)

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“…Consistent with the claims of Wang and Theeuwes (2020), recently Liesefeld and Müller (2020) argued that in sparse displays, the target and distractor may be so “nonsalient” that participants have to rely on serial clump-wise search to find the target. In such a scenario, the priority map is unemployed as it has no benefit for guiding visual search (Liesefeld et al, 2021). As argued before, in those circumstances, salient singletons do not longer capture attention (see Theeuwes, 1994, 2004).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Proactive enhancement and suppression elicited by statistical regularities in visual search.

Huang¹,

Donk²,

Theeuwes³

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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The present study investigated how attentional selection is affected by simultaneous statistical learning of target and distractor regularities. Participants performed an additional singleton task in which the target singleton was presented more often in one location while the distractor singleton was presented more often in another location. On some trials, instead of the search task, participants performed a probe task, in which they had to detect the offset of a probe dot. This probe task made it possible to take a peek at the proactive selection priorities just at the moment the search display was presented. The results show that observers learn the regularities present in the search display such the location that is most likely to contain the target is enhanced while the location that is most likely to contain a distractor is suppressed. We show that these contingencies can be learned simultaneously resulting in optimal selection priorities. The probe task shows that both spatial enhancement and spatial suppression are present at the moment the actual search display is presented, indicating that the attentional priority settings are proactively modulated. We claim that through statistical learning the weights within the spatial priority map of selection are set in such a way that selection is optimally adapted to the implicitly learned regularities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Proactive enhancement and suppression elicited by statistical regularities in visual search.

Huang¹,

Donk²,

Theeuwes³

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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“…Isolating the exact reason why the current results reveal clear RT interference on target-present trials, whereas the previous results did not require further experiments. One likely contributing factor is that participants in the current experiment demonstrated highly efficient search, such efficient search makes it unlikely that participants engaged in a systematically serial search strategy such as "clump scanning" (e.g., see Liesefeld et al, 2021a;Liesefeld & Müller, 2020) or set an attentional window narrowly (e.g., Theeuwes, 2004), both of which might lead to reduced singleton interference. Increased display density in the current experiment is also likely to have served to increase the salience of the distractor, rendering interference observable (e.g., Theeuwes, 2004).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

On the role of top-down and bottom-up guidance in conjunction search: Singleton interference revisited

Dent

2023

Atten Percept Psychophys

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The current study reassessed the potential of salient singleton distractors to interfere in conjunction search. Experiment 1 investigated conjunctions of colour and orientation, using densely packed arrays that produced highly efficient search. The results demonstrated clear interference effects of singleton distractors in task-relevant dimensions colour and orientation, but no interference from those in a task-irrelevant dimension (motion). Goals exerted an influence in constraining this interference such that the singleton interference along one dimension was modulated by target relevance along the other task relevant dimension. Colour singleton interference was much stronger when the singleton shared the target orientation, and orientation interference was much stronger when the orientation singleton shared the target colour. Experiments 2 and 3 examined singleton-distractor interference in feature search. The results showed strong interference particularly from task-relevant dimensions but a reduced role for top-down, feature-based modulation of singleton interference, compared with conjunction search. The results are consistent with a model of conjunction search based on core elements of the guided search and dimension weighting approaches, whereby weighted dimensional feature contrast signals are combined with top-down feature guidance signals in a feature-independent map that serves to guide search.

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“…The suppression of salient distractors has also been measured as a distractor positivity (Pd) component in the EEG of humans (37, 38, 83) but a recent study using the steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP) did not find evidence for suppression below the activity elicited by regular distractors (47). This SSVEP study used displays with only few items, however, and it has been suggested that such displays do not emphasize pop out but require other search processes (‘clump scanning’) (41, 52, 84). The present study went beyond these previous studies by investigating whether suppressive signals influence spiking activity in the visual cortex of monkeys.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One possibility is that salient distractors initially capture attention, but that it is rapidly curtailed by top-down suppression mechanisms (39). Support for such reactive suppression comes from human EEG studies employing markers of distractor selection and suppression (40)(41)(42)(43). The signal suppression hypothesis (35)(36)(37) proposed another account, in which a top-down influence prevents the capture of attention by salient distractors so that there is no need for disengagement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pop-in: the inversion of pop-out for a feature dimension during visual search in area V4 of the monkey cortex

Klink

Teeuwen

Lorteije

et al. 2022

Preprint

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During visual search, it is important to reduce the interference of distracting objects in the scene. The neuronal responses elicited by the search target stimulus are typically enhanced. However, it is equally important to suppress the representations of distracting stimuli, especially if they are salient and capture attention. We trained monkeys to make an eye movement to a unique 'pop-out' shape stimulus among an array of distracting stimuli. One of these distractors had a salient color that varied across trials and differed from the color of the other stimuli, causing it to also pop-out. The monkeys were able to select the pop-out shape target with high accuracy and actively avoided the pop-out color distractor. This behavioral pattern was reflected in the activity of neurons in area V4. Responses to the shape targets were enhanced, while the activity evoked by the pop-out color distractor was only briefly enhanced, directly followed by a sustained period of pronounced suppression. These behavioral and neuronal results demonstrate a cortical selection mechanism that rapidly inverts a pop-out signal to 'pop-in' for an entire feature dimension thereby facilitating goal-directed visual search in the presence of salient distractors.

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Attentional capture: An ameliorable side-effect of searching for salient targets

Cited by 19 publications

References 23 publications

Proactive enhancement and suppression elicited by statistical regularities in visual search.

Proactive enhancement and suppression elicited by statistical regularities in visual search.

On the role of top-down and bottom-up guidance in conjunction search: Singleton interference revisited

Pop-in: the inversion of pop-out for a feature dimension during visual search in area V4 of the monkey cortex

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