Contingent attentional capture by top-down control settings: Converging evidence from event-related potentials (original) (raw)
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Goal-driven attentional capture by invisible colors: Evidence from event-related potentials
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2009
We combined event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and behavioral measures to test whether subliminal visual stimuli can capture attention in a goal-dependent manner. Participants searched for visual targets defined by a specific color. Search displays served as metacontrast masks for preceding cue displays that contained one cue in the target color. Although this target-color cue was spatially uninformative, it produced behavioral spatial cuing effects and triggered an ERP correlate of attentional selection (i.e., the N2pc component). These results demonstrate that target-color cues captured attention, in spite of the fact that cue localization performance assessed in separate blocks was at chance level. We conclude that task-set contingent attentional capture is not restricted to supraliminal stimuli, but is also elicited by visual events that are not consciously perceived.
Psychophysiology, 2020
Many studies using N2pc as a marker of attentional capture have demonstrated topdown contingent capture for salient color singletons: Among all salient cues that are not predictive of the target location, only cues similar to searched-for target features, and thus, matching to the top-down attentional control settings capture attention. This is reflected in matching cue's elicitation of an N2pc and a cueing effect in behavior, and the absence of the corresponding effects for non-matching cues (with features dissimilar to that of the searched-for targets). Yet, with abrupt-onset cues, corresponding evidence is missing, inviting speculations about the potential of abrupt-onset cues to capture attention followed by quick suppression within the target displays. Here, we used two types of abrupt-onset cues to test if capture by such cues also adheres to the contingent-capture principle: matching abrupt-onset cues with a color similar to the top-down control settings and non-matching abruptonset cues with a color different from all searched-for targets. With the help of these cues, top-down contingent capture was supported. Only matching abrupt-onset cues elicited an N2pc and a behavioral cueing effect. Depending on the exact side conditions, non-matching cues either elicited no N2pc or a P D (i.e., evidence of active suppression). Results are discussed against the background of competing theories on attention capture by abrupt-onset cues.
Attentional set modulates visual areas: an event-related potential study of attentional capture
2001
The present experiment offers event-related potential evidence suggesting that modulation of neural activity in the visual cortex underlies top-down attentional capture by irrelevant cues. Participants performed a covert visual search task where they identified the unique stimulus in a brief, four-location display. Targets defined uniquely by color or onset were run in separate blocks, encouraging observers to adopt different attentional sets in each block. In Experiment 1, a brief, white, abrupt-onset cue highlighted one of the locations 100 or 200 ms prior to the target display. In Experiment 2, the cue display consisted of three white and one red cues simultaneously presented at the four locations. In both experiments, participants were informed that there was no predictive relation between the location of the cue and that of the target. Reaction times were dependent on the location of the preceding cue (i.e. attention was captured), but only in those blocks where the cue shared the uniquely relevant target feature. Evoked potentials over the right hemisphere were modulated during the attention-capturing blocks just prior to the cue's appearance. Additionally, the N1 wave elicited by the cue was enhanced over occipital regions during the attention-capturing blocks. These findings support the notion that attentional capture with peripheral cues is not simply reflexive but is modulated by top-down processes.
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
This study used a typical four-item search display to investigate top-down control over attentional capture in an additional singleton paradigm. By manipulating target and distractor color and shape, stimulus saliency relative to the remaining items was systematically varied. One group of participants discriminated the side of a dot within a salient orange target (ST group) presented with green circles (fillers) and a green diamond distractor. A second group discriminated the side of the dot within a green diamond target presented with green circle fillers and a salient orange square distractor (SD group). Results showed faster reaction times and a shorter latency of the N2pc component in the event-related potential (ERP) to the more salient targets in the ST group. Both salient and less salient distractors elicited Pd components of equal amplitude. Behaviorally, no task interference was observed with the less salient distractor, indicating the prevention of attentional capture. How...
Automatic priming of attentional control by relevant colors
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 2012
We combined event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and behavioral measures to test whether subliminal visual stimuli can capture attention in a goal-dependent manner. Participants searched for visual targets defined by a specific color. Search displays served as metacontrast masks for preceding cue displays that contained one cue in the target color. Although this target-color cue was spatially uninformative, it produced behavioral spatial cuing effects and triggered an ERP correlate of attentional selection (i.e., the N2pc component). These results demonstrate that target-color cues captured attention, in spite of the fact that cue localization performance assessed in separate blocks was at chance level. We conclude that task-set contingent attentional capture is not restricted to supraliminal stimuli, but is also elicited by visual events that are not consciously perceived.
The roles of feature-specific task set and bottom-up salience in attentional capture: An ERP study
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2009
We investigated the roles of top-down task set and bottom-up stimulus salience for feature-specific attentional capture. Spatially nonpredictive cues preceded search arrays that included a color-defined target. For target-color singleton cues, behavioral spatial cueing effects were accompanied by cueinduced N2pc components, indicative of attentional capture. These effects were only minimally attenuated for nonsingleton target-color cues, underlining the dominance of top-down task set over salience in attentional capture. Nontarget-color singleton cues triggered no N2pc, but instead an anterior N2 component indicative of top-down inhibition. In Experiment 2, inverted behavioral cueing effects of these cues were accompanied by a delayed N2pc to targets at cued locations, suggesting that perceptually salient but task-irrelevant visual events trigger location-specific inhibition mechanisms that can delay subsequent target selection.
Contingent attentional capture occurs by activated target congruence
Perception & Psychophysics, 2008
Attentional selection of information from a stimulus array is controlled in at least two distinct ways . One way involves the viewer's ability to control what regions or objects should be selected on the basis of the viewer's goals or intentions (i.e., goal-directed, or top-down, selection). The other way is stimulus-driven, or bottom-up, selection, which refers to the fact that certain properties of a stimulus may capture attention independently of the viewer's current goals or intentions. Whereas goal-directed selection generally helps viewers' performance, stimulus-driven selection potentially disrupts it, because needless selection sometimes occurs. This article focuses on an interesting interaction between the viewers' top-down intentions and stimulus-driven attentional selection, which is known as contingent attentional capture. Contingent attentional capture is a phenomenon in which the viewer's attention is driven to select (or is captured by) a stimulus that looks like the current target.
Is contextual cueing more than the guidance of visual–spatial attention?
Biological Psychology, 2011
When search displays are repeatedly presented, participants become faster in finding the target (contextual cueing, CC). It has been debated whether a more liberal response criterion might contribute to CC. In the current experiment, participants had to search through target-absent and target-present trials to compute d-prime as the measurement of sensitivity and beta as the measurement of response bias. Results showed that participants' sensitivity was not affected by the repetition of search displays. Although repeated displays led to both faster RTs and a more liberal response criterion, these effects were uncorrelated. In the event-related potential, RT effects were reflected by a late positive activity, which reflects response-related processes, but not by differences in the N2pc as electrophysiological correlate of focused attention. These results indicate that a more liberal response criterion is not the cause for CC effects in RTs but that other response-related processes might still contribute to the effect.
We investigated whether involuntarily directing attention to a target-colored distractor causes the corresponding attentional set to enter a limited-capacity focus of attention, thereby facilitating the identification of a subsequent target whose color matches the same attentional set. As predicted, in Experiment 1 contingent attentional capture effects from a target-colored distractor were only one half to one third as large when subsequent target identification relied on the same (versus a different) attentional set. In Experiment 2, this effect was eliminated when all target colors matched the same attentional set, arguing against bottom-up perceptual priming of the distractor’s color as an alternative account of our findings. In Experiment 3, this effect was reversed when a target-colored distractor appeared after the target, ruling out a feature-based interference account of our findings. We conclude that capacity limitations in working memory strongly influence contingent attentional capture when multiple attentional sets guide selection.