Distractor-induced blindness for orientation changes and coherent motion

Abstract

The conscious perception of simple visual stimuli can be modulated by the presence of distractors. In the motion blindness paradigm, the detection of coherent motion is impaired when task-irrelevant motion distractors are presented prior to the target. Aim of this study was to examine the feature specificity of the distractor effect. For this reason, targets were either defined by motion coherence ("motion blindness") or orientation changes ("orientation blindness"). In a series of three experiments we show that distractors have to share the feature characteristics of the target in order to reduce its detectability. However, independent inhibition sets for visual features can be activated if the targets' characteristics are ambiguous.

Closing the Gates to Consciousness: Distractors Activate a Central Inhibition Process

“…The activation of the process shares the prerequisites of contingent attentional capture-as far as a match between the features of the distractor and the target is required. In line with our behavioral findings (Michael et al, 2011), the pattern of neural activity is independent of the visual feature defining the distractor. Similar ERP results have been obtained for orientation changes and for motion episodes (Niedeggen et al, 2004).…”

“…Distractors in the motion task were defined as "incongruent distractors" because a different visual feature defined the target. On the basis of behavioral findings from our previous experiments on the effect of feature specificity (Michael, Hesselmann, Kiefer, & Niedeggen, 2011), a "mixed" distractor block was not included in the design: We have shown that the expression of distractor-induced blindness was not affected if incongruent features were added to RSVP sequences determined by congruent distractors (Experiment 3).…”

Might Cortical Hyper-Responsiveness in Aging Contribute to Alzheimer’s Disease?

“…Previously, task-irrelevant stimuli were seen to reduce responses to task-relevant stimuli. That distractor inhibition [45], [46], [47] is smaller with complex stimuli and larger with demanding tasks [48], [49], [50]. Our selective attention task reverses that effect, with the 2 nd stimulus enhancing responses (Figure 2).…”

Open and closed cortico-subcortical loops: A neuro-computational account of access to consciousness in the distractor-induced blindness paradigm

“…These results fit well with our proposal that access to consciousness is controlled by those BG pathways that modulate activity in the prefrontal cortex. Michael, Hesselmann, Kiefer, and Niedeggen (2011) recently showed that distractor-induced blindness works not only for motion stimuli but also for changes in the orientation of static stimuli. Our model readily embraces these results by assuming that different input stimuli stimulate the same BG pathways.…”

“…As a consequence, the model does not account for findings that the blindness effect increases in magnitude with increasing numbers of distractors (Hesselmann et al, 2006;Michael et al, 2011;Niedeggen et al, 2004Niedeggen et al, , 2012. Moreover, the current implementation of the reset pulse that terminates reverberation of activity in the closed frontal loop is of a rather abstract nature as it is evoked from outside the model rather than originating from model dynamics.…”