Spatial proximity as a determinant of context-specific attentional settings

Abstract

People implicitly encode the history of stimulus conflict associated with particular contexts and use this information to modulate attention to distractors. This manifests as a reduction in the compatibility effect in mostly incompatible locations compared to mostly compatible locations, a difference termed the context-specific proportion compatibility (CSPC) effect. CSPC effects are explained by an episodic retrieval account positing that abstract attentional settings bind to contextual cues—allowing rapid, context-driven modulation of attention. The current study interrogated this binding process by testing the influence of relative spatial proximity on the association of attentional settings with particular locations. In Experiment 1, like typical CSPC paradigms, biased locations appeared near top (e.g., mostly compatible) and bottom (e.g., mostly incompatible) edges of the screen. A novel feature was the addition of two mostly compatible (above fixation) and two mostly incompatible (below fixation) locations placed within close proximity at the middle of the screen. A CSPC effect was found for outer but not middle mostly compatible and mostly incompatible locations, suggesting the attentional setting bound to the middle locations reflected the average history of conflict (i.e., 50% compatible) for the whole group of locations. In Experiment 2, distance between middle locations was increased allowing middle locations to group with outer locations. The CSPC effect was found for outer and middle mostly compatible and mostly incompatible locations. Results support the relative proximity hypothesis, positing that attentional settings bound to a particular location are influenced by experience within a location and relatively close neighboring locations.

Boundary conditions for the influence of spatial proximity on context-specific attentional settings

“…A secondary aim of the present experiments was to measure explicit awareness of the differences in proportion compatibility between the lower and upper halves of the screen, since prior studies had demonstrated that CSPC effects may occur in the absence of explicit awareness of proportion compatibility. In all experiments, the participants were asked to estimate the proportion of compatible trials in the lower and upper halves of the screen separately, as well as to provide a confidence rating for each estimate (Crump et al, 2008;Diede & Bugg, 2016. Analyses of these data are reported in the main text of the Results sections.…”

“…Although there is some evidence that the attentional setting adopted in the mostly incompatible location is associated with more effort than the setting adopted in the mostly compatible location (Diede & Bugg, 2017), context-specific modulations of control appear to occur implicitly. Participants have been unable to retrospectively report differences in the proportions of compatible trials between contexts in CSPC paradigms (Crump, Vaquero, & Milliken, 2008;Diede & Bugg, 2016; but see Schouppe, Ridderinkhof, Verguts, & Notebaert, 2014).…”

“…The unique feature of the modified CSPC paradigm used in the present study is that multiple locations appear in the lower and upper halves of the screen, instead of just one location per half. All locations within a given half share the same history of conflict (e.g., all three locations in the lower half are mostly incompatible; see Diede & Bugg, 2016). The advantage of the modified paradigm is that it enables one to examine how experiences across multiple locations, including those in the opposite half of the screen (i.e., those with the opposite proportion compatibility), may contribute to learning of the attentional setting for an individual location.…”

“…The relative-proximity hypothesis was proposed to explain the spatial grouping effect (Diede & Bugg, 2016). The hypothesis extended the episodic-retrieval account by suggesting that locations of greater relative proximity, despite their differing proportion compatibilities (conflict histories), are bound into a single episodic representation separate from the distal locations.…”

“…The hypothesis extended the episodic-retrieval account by suggesting that locations of greater relative proximity, despite their differing proportion compatibilities (conflict histories), are bound into a single episodic representation separate from the distal locations. Because the middle locations contributing to the episodic representation in Diede and Bugg (2016) had opposite conflict histories (e.g., 25% compatible vs. 75% compatible locations), the summed experience of all trials within the group (i.e., across the four locations) resulted in a 50% proportion compatibility. The resulting attentional setting associated with and retrieved by any of the locations falling within the group was therefore an Bunbiased^setting (i.e., intermediate to the settings one would find in a mostly incongruent and a mostly incongruent location), thereby precluding the CSPC effect.…”