Memory precision for salient distractors decreases with learned suppression

Won, Bo-Yeong; Venkatesh, Aditi; Witkowski, Phillip; Banh, Timothy; Geng, Joy J.

doi:10.3758/s13423-021-01968-z

Cited by 11 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…When confronted with many distractors, on the other hand, nonspecific suppression is rapidly in place. The observed time-course suggests that probabilistic expectations regarding distractor occurrence are formed very rapidly and speaks to the remarkable flexibility of second-order suppression, a flexibility that had so far only been reported for learned suppression based on predictable distractor characteristics (e.g., Valsecchi & Turatto, 2021; Wang & Theeuwes, 2020; Won et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Does it help to expect distraction? Attentional capture is attenuated by high distractor frequency but not by trial-to-trial predictability.

Bogaerts¹,

Moorselaar²,

Theeuwes³

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Salient distractors such as color singletons typically capture attention. Recent studies have shown that probabilistic expectations of color singletons' occurrence-even when their location and features are unpredictablecan eliminate attentional capture. Here we ask whether this effect, referred to as "second-order distractor suppression," (a) could be merely a result of repetition priming, and (b) is also observed when distractor occurrences are predictable within a sequence of trials? Experiment 1 introduces a novel approach for manipulating the frequency of distractor occurrence while controlling for intertrial priming by design, by embedding identical trial sequences in the to-be-compared conditions. We observed no elimination but significant attenuation of capture in the condition with a higher distractor frequency. In Experiments 2 and 3 we investigated the effect of the trial-to-trial predictability of distractor presence. Repeating regular distractor absent/present patterns did not result in attenuated capture compared with a random condition, not even when upcoming distractor presence was cued. Taken together, the results demonstrate that second-order distractor suppression is not merely a result of repetition priming. However, it is not a response to any type of expectation; this nonspecific type of suppression is almost instantly elicited by environments characterized by a high likelihood of distractors but not by distractor presence that can be anticipated on a trial-by-trial basis. Public Significance StatementDoes it help to expect distracting, task-irrelevant stimuli even if we do not know what a distractor will look like or where it will appear? This study investigated how the frequency of singleton distractors, their occurrence within a predictable sequence, and explicit cues regarding distractor presence in an upcoming display affect attentional capture. It used a novel experimental approach to tightly control intertrial effects. The results suggest that humans are able to very promptly adopt a nonspecific distractor suppression mode (resulting in attenuated attentional capture) upon entering contexts where task-irrelevant distracting stimuli are highly frequent. This same type of suppression is not elicited when the presence of a distractor in an upcoming search display is predictable given the preceding trial sequence, not even with the addition of a cue that explicitly indicated distractor absence or presence. This work highlights the importance of differentiating between different types of statistical regularities (a distribution vs. a trial-to-trial sequence) that could lead to the formation of expectations regarding distraction and modulate attentional capture.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

“…flexibility that had so far only been reported for learned suppression based on predictable distractor characteristics (e.g., Valsecchi & Turatto, 2021;Won et al, 2021).…”

Section: Does It Help To Expect Distraction? 251mentioning

confidence: 99%

Does it help to expect distraction? Attentional capture is attenuated by high distractor frequency but not by trial-to-trial predictability.

Bogaerts¹,

Moorselaar²,

Theeuwes³

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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show abstract

“…In attention paradigms, salient distractors, even ones that are well suppressed by attention, can nevertheless be represented in the brain or leave traces of processing (Won et al, 2020;Geng and Duarte, 2021;Won et al, 2021). The current study adds to the body of work on distractor processing during selective visual attention by examining the time course of distractor representations and comparing that to the time course for target representations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Time courses of attended and ignored object representations

Noah¹,

Meyyappan²,

Ding³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Selective attention prioritizes information that is relevant to behavioral goals. Previous studies have shown that attended visual information is processed and represented more efficiently, but distracting visual information is not fully suppressed, and may also continue to be represented in the brain. In natural vision, to-be-attended and to-be-ignored objects may be present simultaneously in the scene. Understanding precisely how each is represented in the visual system, and how these neural representations evolve over time, remains a key goal in cognitive neuroscience. In this study, we recorded EEG while participants performed a cued object-based attention task that involved attending to target objects and ignoring simultaneously presented and spatially overlapping distractor objects. We performed support vector machine classification on the stimulus-evoked EEG data to separately track the temporal dynamics of target and distractor representations. We found that (1) both target and distractor objects were decodable during the early phase of object processing (~100 msec to ~200 msec after target onset), and (2) the representations of both objects were sustained over time, remaining decodable above chance until ~1000 msec latency. However, (3) the distractor object information faded significantly beginning after about 400 msec latency. These findings provide information about the fate of attended and ignored visual information in complex scene perception.

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“…In attention paradigms, salient distractors, even ones that are well suppressed by attention, can nevertheless be represented in the brain or leave traces of processing (Battistoni et al, 2020;Geng & Duarte, 2021;Goddard et al, 2022;Grootswagers et al, 2021;Kaiser et al, 2016;Moerel et al, 2022;Wen et al, 2019;Won, Forloines, Zhou, & Geng, 2020;Won, Venkatesh, Witkowski, Banh, & Geng, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time Courses of Attended and Ignored Object Representations

Noah

Meyyappan

Ding

et al. 2023

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Selective attention prioritizes information that is relevant to behavioral goals. Previous studies have shown that attended visual information is processed and represented more efficiently, but distracting visual information is not fully suppressed, and may also continue to be represented in the brain. In natural vision, to-be-attended and to-be-ignored objects may be present simultaneously in the scene. Understanding precisely how each is represented in the visual system, and how these neural representations evolve over time, remains a key goal in cognitive neuroscience. In this study, we recorded EEG while participants performed a cued object-based attention task that involved attending to target objects and ignoring simultaneously presented and spatially overlapping distractor objects. We performed support vector machine classification on the stimulus-evoked EEG data to separately track the temporal dynamics of target and distractor representations. We found that (1) both target and distractor objects were decodable during the early phase of object processing (∼100 msec to ∼200 msec after target onset), and (2) the representations of both objects were sustained over time, remaining decodable above chance until ∼1000-msec latency. However, (3) the distractor object information faded significantly beginning after about 300-msec latency. These findings provide information about the fate of attended and ignored visual information in complex scene perception.

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Memory precision for salient distractors decreases with learned suppression

Cited by 11 publications

References 50 publications

Does it help to expect distraction? Attentional capture is attenuated by high distractor frequency but not by trial-to-trial predictability.

Does it help to expect distraction? Attentional capture is attenuated by high distractor frequency but not by trial-to-trial predictability.

Time courses of attended and ignored object representations

Time Courses of Attended and Ignored Object Representations

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