Contingent attentional capture occurs by activated target congruence (original) (raw)
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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.
The role of cueing in attentional capture
Visual Cognition, 2008
In the present study, participants searched for an odd-man-out target within the shape dimension (either a diamond or a circle) while a colour distractor singleton could be present. In some conditions, the identity of the target singleton for the upcoming trial was cued in advance by either a word cue (e.g., a word saying ''diamond'') or a symbolic cue (e.g., a cue showing the shape of a diamond). The results indicate that cueing the upcoming target singleton reduced but did not eliminate attentional capture by the irrelevant colour distractor. Furthermore, cueing benefits were especially large when a colour distractor was present, suggesting that top-down processing plays a large role after attention has been captured to the location of the irrelevant colour distractor. Finally, when no distractor is present, top-down processing plays no role; in those circumstances, only priming can facilitate singleton search.
Towards a resolution of the attentional-capture debate
Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 2015
The relative contributions of stimulus-driven and goal-directed control of attention have been extensively studied by investigating which irrelevant stimuli capture attention. Although much of this research has focused on color-singleton distractors, the circumstances under which these capture attention remain controversial. In search for a target with a unique known color (known-singleton search), whether singletons in an irrelevant color can be successfully ignored is a hotly debated issue. In search for a target that is not a singleton (feature search), no capture by irrelevant-color singletons is typically observed, but a reverse cueing effect was occasionally reported in the spatial-cueing paradigm. In 3 experiments, we resolve these controversies, by showing that the net spatial effect observed in the spatial-cueing paradigm reflects the sum of 3 separate effects. (a) A same-location benefit, which is determined by the match between the cue and the target colors and indexes co...
Object-based selection under focused attention: A failure to replicate
Perception & Psychophysics, 2000
In a recent study, Lavie and Driver (1996) reported that object-based effects found with distributed attention disappear when attention is focused on a narrow area of the display. This finding stands in contrast with previous reports of object-based effects under conditions of focused attention (e.g., Atchley & Kramer, 1998; Egly, Driver, & Rafal, 1994).The present study was an attempt to replicate Lavie and Driver's finding, using similar task and stimuli. WhileLavie and Driver's object-based effect in the distributed attention condition was replicated, its absence in the focused attention condition was not. In the two experiments reported in this paper, object-based effects were found under conditions of both distributed and focused attention, with no difference in the magnitude of the object-based effects in the two conditions. It is concluded that, in contrast with Lavie and Driver's claim, the initial spatial setting of attention does not influence object-based constraints on the distribution of attention. A central issue in the study ofvisual selective attention concerns the representational format in which selection takes place. In the last 15 years, numerous studies have investigated whether attentional selection operates within space-based or within object-based representations (see Egeth & Yantis, 1997, for a review). Evidence coming from a wide range ofparadigms shows that the distribution ofattentional resources is constrained by grouping factors other than proximity, thus providing strong support for the object-based view. Using the Eriksen response competition paradigm or flanker task (Eriksen & Hoffman, 1973), several experiments showed that distractors slow response to a target more when they are grouped with it (e.g., by common color or contour) than when they are not (e.g.,
Contingent capture in cueing: the role of color search templates and cue-target color relations
Psychological Research, 2013
Visual search studies have shown that attention can be top-down biased to a specific target color, so that only items with this color or a similar color can capture attention. According to some theories of attention, colors from different categories (i.e., red, green, blue, yellow) are represented independently. However, other accounts have proposed that these are related-either because color is filtered through broad overlapping channels (4-channel view), or because colors are represented in one continuous feature space (e.g., CIE space) and search is governed by specific principles (e.g., linear separability between colors, or top-down tuning to relative colors). The present study tested these different views using a cueing experiment in which observers had to select one target color (e.g., red) and ignore two or four differently colored distractors that were presented prior to the target (cues). The results showed clear evidence for top-down contingent capture by colors, as a target-colored cue captured attention more strongly than differently colored cues. However, the results failed to support any of the proposed views that different color categories are related to one another by overlapping channels, linear separability, or relational guidance (N = 96).
Set-specific capture can be reduced by pre-emptively occupying a limited-capacity focus of attention
"Recent work has shown that contingent attentional capture effects can be especially large when multiple attentional sets for colour guide visual search (Moore & Weissman, 2010). In particular, this research suggests that detecting a target coloured (e.g., orange) distractor leads the corresponding attentional set (e.g., identify orange letters) to enter a limited-capacity focus of attention in working memory, where it remains briefly while the distractor is being attended. Consequently, the ability to identify a differently coloured (e.g., green) target 100-300 ms later is impaired because the appropriate set (e.g., identify green letters) cannot also enter the focus of attention. In two experiments, we investigated whether such set-specific capture can be reduced by pre-emptively occupying the focus of attention. As predicted, a target-coloured central distractor presented 233 ms before a target-coloured peripheral distractor eliminated set-specific capture arising from the peripheral distractor. Moreover, this effect was observed only when the central distractor’s colour (e.g., orange) (1) matched a different set than the upcoming peripheral distractor’s colour (e.g., green) and (2) matched the same set as the upcoming central target’s colour (e.g., orange). We conclude that the same working memory limitations that give rise to set-specific capture can be pre-emptively exploited to reduce it."
Psychological Science, 2018
We examined whether shifting attention to a location necessarily entails extracting the features at that location, a process referred to as attentional engagement. In three spatial-cuing experiments ( N = 60), we found that an onset cue captured attention both when it shared the target’s color and when it did not. Yet the effects of the match between the response associated with the cued object’s identity and the response associated with the target (compatibility effects), which are diagnostic of attentional engagement, were observed only with relevant-color onset cues. These findings demonstrate that stimulus- and goal-driven capture have qualitatively different consequences: Before attention is reoriented to the target, it is engaged to the location of the critical distractor following goal-driven capture but not stimulus-driven capture. The reported dissociation between attentional shifts and attentional engagement suggests that attention is best described as a camera: One can al...