Novel tests of capture by irrelevant abrupt onsets: No evidence for a mediating role of search task difficulty during color search

Schmid, Rebecca Rosa; Ansorge, Ulrich

doi:10.3758/s13414-022-02623-y

Cited by 2 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…The results of Experiment 1 for manual responses replicated previous findings showing that the cue-validity effect increased with search difficulty (Darnell & Lamy, 2022; Gaspelin et al, 2016; D. Lamy et al, 2018; but see Schmid & Ansorge, 2023). The results for eye movements showed that most early first saccades landed on the cue, indicating that on those trials, the cue captured overt attention.…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 85%

“…Lamy et al (2018) on manual responses: in both experiments, the validity effect associated with the irrelevant onset cue was significant for easy search and considerably increased with search difficulty. Recently, however, using a similar abrupt-onset cue, Schmid and Ansorge (2023) reported that search difficulty did not modulate the cue-validity effect. There were two notable differences between that study and ours.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The second difference is that here, participants were free to move their eyes (and were only instructed not to move them in Gaspelin et al, 2016; D. Lamy et al, 2018), whereas Schmid and Ansorge (2023) ensured that gaze remained at fixation. Thus, in future research, it will be important to test the role of gaze fixation on the modulation of the cue-validity effects by search difficulty, in search for a shape-defined target.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There were two notable differences between that study and ours. One is that we used a shape-search task that was more difficult and a difficulty manipulation that was much stronger (yielding an RT difference of about 100–200 ms relative about 50 ms in Schmid & Ansorge, 2023). As acknowledged by these authors, it seems to be “peculiarly challenging to make a sufficiently difficult color search” (p. 679).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the timing of overt attention deployment: Eye-movement evidence for the priority accumulation framework.

Toledano,

Sasi,

Yuval-Greenberg

et al. 2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Most visual-search theories assume that our attention is automatically allocated to the location with the highest priority at any given moment. The Priority Accumulation Framework (PAF) challenges this assumption. It suggests that the priority weight at each location accumulates across sequential events and that evidence for the presence of action-relevant information contributes to determining when attention is deployed to the location with the highest accumulated priority. Here, we tested these hypotheses for overt attention by recording first saccades in a free-viewing spatial-cueing task. We manipulated search difficulty (Experiments 1 and 2) and cue salience (Experiment 2). Standard theories posit that when oculomotor capture by the cue occurs, it is initiated before the search display appears; therefore, these theories predict that the cue's impact on the distribution of first saccades should be independent of search difficulty but influenced by the cue's saliency. By contrast, PAF posits that the cue can bias competition later, after processing of the search display has already started, and therefore predicts that such late impact should increase with both search difficulty and cue salience. The results fully supported PAF's predictions. Our account suggests a distinction between attentional capture and attentional-priority bias that resolves enduring inconsistencies in the attentional-capture literature. Public Significance StatementWhen do we deploy our attention? Many studies showed that when a salient irrelevant event appears before the object we are looking for, it often attracts attention to its location, against our will. Based on such findings, most theories assume that our attention shifts to the highest-priority object at any given time, at the mercy of constant changes in our environment. Recently, we challenged this assumption. We suggested the Priority Accumulation Framework, which posits that attentional priority accumulates across sequential events in each region of our visual field (based on whether a potentially important object appears there) and that when we deploy our attention depends on when we detect action-relevant information. Here, we compared these two accounts with regard to eye movements (overt attention).

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

On the timing of overt attention deployment: Eye-movement evidence for the priority accumulation framework.

Toledano,

Sasi,

Yuval-Greenberg

et al. 2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…1). A similar observation was recently published by Schmid and Ansorge (2022), who acknowledged that “it is peculiarly challenging to make a sufficiently difficult color search” (p. 14).…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 75%

Feature intertrial priming biases attentional priority: Evidence from the capture-probe paradigm.

Wirth¹,

Ramgir²,

Lamy³

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Prior experience has a strong impact on search performance, and most recent models of attention incorporate selection history as an important source of attentional guidance. Here, we focused on feature intertrial priming, a robust effect showing that responses to a singleton target are considerably faster when its unique feature repeats versus changes across successive trials. Previous studies showed that such target repetition does not reliably reduce the interference exerted by a salient distractor. This finding has been taken to indicate that target repetition does not enhance the target's competitive edge relative to the salient distractor. Therefore, it challenges the notion that intertrial priming modulates attentional priority. Here, we suggest that this inference may be misguided because the interpretation of distractor interference as a measure of the attentional priority of the salient distractor relative to the target is incorrect. To obtain a more direct measure of the impact of feature intertrial priming on the target's priority relative to a salient distractor and nontargets, we used the capture-probe paradigm. Across two experiments, probe reports from the target location increased at the expense of the salient distractor and nontarget locations when the target feature repeated versus changed, whereas distractor interference was unaffected. These findings show that feature intertrial repetition influences attentional priority. They also clearly illustrate that distractor interference indexes the priority of the salient distractor relative to the nontarget it replaces, not relative to the target-a reinterpretation that has important implications for the field of attentional capture. Public Significance StatementWhen we search for a target, we respond to it faster when resembles an object we have looked for and found recently-for instance, when it has the same color. Many studies show that this happens because the target with the repeated feature gains attentional priority and is found faster. However, other studies yielded a puzzling finding: repeating the target feature does not help us resist distraction from a physically salient distractor, measured as slower search when this distractor is present (distractor interference). As this cost is assumed to indicate that the distractor has higher attentional priority than the target, how can the repeated target gain priority without the salient distractor losing some? Here, we resolve this controversy by reinterpreting distractor interference. As distractor interference is one of the most popular measures of attentional priority, our findings have important implications for the attention research.

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Novel tests of capture by irrelevant abrupt onsets: No evidence for a mediating role of search task difficulty during color search

Cited by 2 publications

References 53 publications

On the timing of overt attention deployment: Eye-movement evidence for the priority accumulation framework.

On the timing of overt attention deployment: Eye-movement evidence for the priority accumulation framework.

Feature intertrial priming biases attentional priority: Evidence from the capture-probe paradigm.

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