The control of visual attention and its influence on prioritized processing in a location negative priming paradigm

Abstract

In a location-based negative priming paradigm, the possibility of a disengagement option of the underlying inhibitory mechanism was tested. Whereas in previous studies disengagement was observed when providing utility information about the probe trial structure, in the present study the allocation of visual attention to the stimuli was manipulated. In the first step an automatic deployment of visual attention was implemented by presenting all stimuli as abrupt onsets (Experiment 1), which demonstrated commonly observed negative priming effects. In further conditions of non-automatic allocation of visual attention in which target and distractor were presented as no-onset stimuli, negative priming effects were eliminated (Experiments 2 and 3). The preferred interpretation is that in conditions of automatic control of attention, target and distractor compete for control of action. A non-automatic control of visual attention, on the other hand, leads to a top-down modulated selection, which results in prioritized target encoding and a loss of distractor impact on the selection process. Alternative accounts and the role of no-onset distractor processing were investigated in Experiment 4.

Electrophysiological evidence for cognitive control during conflict processing in visual spatial attention

“…Krueger et al (2007) investigated the role of attentional control in conflict processing by manipulation the onset mode of the stimuli. They found a behavioral NP effect for the onset but not for the masked stimulus condition (replicating results from Fischer & Hagendorf, 2006) associated with activations in the superior parietal cortex sensitive to these changes. Furthermore the authors could identify regions in the DLPFC and inferior parietal cortex to be involved in the conflict resolution indicating stronger attentional top-down modulations in the fronto-parietal network.…”

Neuroimaging Evidence for Processes Underlying Repetition of Ignored Stimuli

“…In DT trials, the probe target appears at the location previously occupied by the prime distractor. DT trials result in increased response times, which are explained by additional distractor processing demands [7]–[8]. However, the nature of these control processes is under discussion [9].…”

“…As inhibitory processes decay gradually and do not dissolve with offset of the prime, inhibition of the prime distractor is still active at the time of probe presentation. For this reason the probe target must be presented in a certain timeframe to reveal a NP effect [7]. And probe targets of DT trials in comparison to control probe targets are particularly ‘weak’, because their identity/location are similar or even identical to those of the previously inhibited prime distractor.…”

An event-related potentials study of identity positive and negative priming

“…In location tasks, participants also select a target on the basis of a particular physical attribute but are required to respond to a target location. As a general finding, research using location tasks failed to produce positive priming effects although clear negative priming effects have been reported (Buckolz et al, 2004;Park and Kanwisher, 1994; but see Fischer and Hagendorf, 2006). In contrast, with identification tasks positive priming is usually more reliable than negative priming (Lammertyn and Fias, 2005;Leboe et al, 2005;Malley and Strayer, 1995), although some studies have found subtle negative priming effects Lammertyn and Fias, 2005;Luna et al, 2006).…”

“…Cognitive variables have also shown to play an important role when attempting to explain processes involved in negative priming. In this regard, non-automatic control of attention makes negative priming to vanish as compared to conditions of automatic allocation of visual attention (Fischer and Hagendorf, 2006).…”