Intertrial priming due to distractor repetition is eliminated in homogeneous contexts

Abstract

Targets are found more easily in a visual search task when their feature is repeatedly presented, an effect known as intertrial priming. Recent findings suggest that priming of distractors can also improve search performance by facilitated suppression of repeated distractor features. The efficacy of intertrial priming for targets can be potentiated by the expectancy of a specific target feature; systematic repetition shows larger intertrial priming than random repetition. For distractors, the underlying mechanism is less clear. We used the systematic lateralization approach to disentangle target-and distractorrelated processing with subcomponents of the N2pc. We found no modulation of the N T component, which reflects prioritization of target processing. The N D component, which reflects attentional capture by irrelevant stimuli, however, showed intertrial priming: N D monotonically decreased with repetition of a distractor color, but only if a specific distractor feature was expected, and if the context induced a search that was vulnerable to attentional capture. These observations suggest that distractor priming only improves visual search if volitional control is relatively high. The results also suggest that intertrial priming for distractors is due to decreased attentional capture by repeatedly presented distractors, whereas target processing remains unaffected. To cope with the vast amount of incoming information, the visual system selects stimuli based not only on intentions of the observer and physical salience but also on recent selection history. For example, RTs for targets decrease when a target feature is identical to a preceding trial. This intertrial priming effect was originally found for pop-out targets that are defined by a unique feature that clearly separates them from all visual background and termed Keywords

Perceptual learning induces active suppression of physically nonsalient shapes

“…This result indicated that spatial attention was initially oriented to the highly salient color singleton and was considered to reflect automatic attentional capture. Consistent results were also found in many other ERP studies using additional singleton paradigms (e.g., Burra & Kerzel, ; Feldmann‐Wüstefeld & Schubö, ). According to Theeuwes (see Theeuwes, for a review), the extent to which attention is spread also determines the occurrence of stimulus‐driven attentional capture: a highly salient singleton will not capture attention when it falls outside of the attentional window.…”

Selection history alters attentional filter settings persistently and beyond top‐down control

“…Results showed that target feature repetition resulted in generally better performance than target feature change (so‐called intertrial priming; Maljkovic & Nakayama, ; see also Becker, Ansorge, & Horstmann, ; Found & Müller, ; Kristjánsson, Vuilleumier, Schwartz, Macaluso, & Driver, ; Lamy, Carmel, Egeth, & Leber, ) and that predictability could potentiate this intertrial priming effect. In line with this, neurophysiological evidence suggests that intertrial priming results in less attentional capture by salient irrelevant items, but only if a specific distractor feature was expected (Feldmann‐Wüstefeld & Schubö, ). Although the stimulus features always differed between tasks in the present experiment, (note that participants had to categorize “green” and “blue” or “triangle and “pentagon” in the categorization task, but search for the “diamond” shape and ignore the feature “red” in the visual search task), predictability also improved performance in Experiment 2.…”

Statistical regularities induce spatial as well as feature-specific suppression.

“…Geng & Behrmann, 2005;Chun & Jiang, 1998). A recent study by Wang and Theeuwes (2018a) suggests that the exposure to regularities regarding a distractor location induces spatially selective suppression (see also Ferrante et al, 2018;Goschy, Bakos, Müller, & Zehetleitner, 2014;Feldmann-Wüstefeld & Schubö, 2016). In their study, participants searched for a shape singleton (circle among diamonds or vice versa) while ignoring a task-irrelevant color distractor (red among green or vice versa).…”