Little engagement of attention by salient distractors defined in a different dimension or modality to the visual search target

Tsai, Shao-Yang; Nasemann, Jan; Qiu, Nan; Töllner, Thomas; Müller, Hermann J.; Shi, Zhuanghua

doi:10.1111/psyp.14375

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 128 publications

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“…The N2pc component has been extensively studied in visual search over the last decades and has been established as a marker for the spatial allocation of attention in vision (Eimer, 1996(Eimer, , 2014Constant et al, 2023). Similar lateralized ERP components have been discovered for other modalities, such as the N2ac component (Gamble and Luck, 2011) for audition (which we study here) and the N2cc component (also known as the CCN; Katus & Eimer, 2019;Tsai et al, 2023) for tactile modality. Both components are believed to be functional analogs of the N2pc component in their respective sensory modalities -used to index spatial allocation of attention.…”

Section: Indication Of a Domain-general Attention Allocation Mechanismsupporting

confidence: 71%

Tracking the misallocation and reallocation of spatial attention towards auditory stimuli

Mandal,

Liesefeld,

Liesefeld

2023

Preprint

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Completely ignoring a salient distractor presented concurrently with a target is difficult and sometimes attention is involuntarily attracted to the distractor’s location (attentional capture). Employing the N2ac component as a marker of attention allocation towards sounds, in this study we investigate the spatio-temporal dynamics of auditory attention across two experiments. Human participants (male and female) performed an auditory search task, where the target was accompanied by a distractor in 2/3rd of the trials. For a distractor more salient than target (Exp. 1), we observe not only a distractor N2ac (indicating attentional capture), but the full chain of attentional dynamics implied by the notion of attentional capture, namely: (a) the distractor captures attention before the target is attended, (b) allocation of attention to the target is delayed by distractor presence, and (c) the target is attended after the distractor. Conversely, for a distractor less salient than the target (Exp. 2), although behavioral interference was present, no attentional capture was observed. Together, these findings reveal two types of spatial-attentional dynamics in the auditory modality (distraction with and without attentional capture).Significance StatementOftentimes, we find it hard to ignore the location of a salient sound that distracts us from our current tasks. Although, a common everyday experience, little is known about how spatial distraction unfolds at the neural level in the auditory modality. Using electrophysiological markers of attention allocations, we report comprehensive evidence of spatial attentional capture by a salient auditory distractor, indicating that attention is first misallocated to the distractor and only afterwards reallocated towards the target. Similar patterns were observed earlier only in vision and their discovery in the auditory modality indicates towards the existence of domain-general spatial attentional dynamics consistent across sensory modalities. Finally, we demonstrate that only a distractor more salient than the target reliably captures attention.

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Section: Indication Of a Domain-general Attention Allocation Mechanismsupporting

confidence: 71%

Tracking the misallocation and reallocation of spatial attention towards auditory stimuli

Mandal,

Liesefeld,

Liesefeld

2023

Preprint

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“…This would be predicted by an extension of the dimension-weighting account, the modality-weighting account (Nasemann et al, 2023; Töllner et al, 2009). A recent study by Tsai et al (2023) has provided evidence toward this prediction for tactile distractors. Comparable to our study, they also show an absence of interference effects of their tactile distractors on visual search, indicating a down-weighting of the tactile modality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

The surprising robustness of visual search against concurrent auditory distraction.

Mandal,

Liesefeld,

Liesefeld

2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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People often complain about distraction by irrelevant sounds that reportedly hamper performance on concurrent visual tasks demanding the allocation of focused attention toward relevant stimuli, such as processing street signs during driving. To study this everyday issue experimentally, we devised a cross-modal distraction paradigm, inspired by a standard visual-distraction paradigm (additional-singleton paradigm) that is highly sensitive to measure interference on the allocation of attention. In a visual-search pop-out task, participants reported whether a salient target (a tilted bar) was present or absent, while a completely irrelevant, but salient auditory distractor accompanied some trials. To our surprise, the results revealed no notable distraction on visual-search performance (controlled for speed-accuracy tradeoffs). Reliable auditory distraction failed to occur even when the distractor was a (highly salient) auditory oddball or was additionally presented with a temporal advantage of 300 ms. However, when the auditory modality was made relevant globally while maintaining its irrelevance to the visual-search task, we finally observed the expected interference effect. Public Significance StatementDistraction by irrelevant sounds while looking for relevant visual information (visual search) is a common experience, but little is known regarding the conditions under which such distraction occurs (or does not occur). The present study demonstrates that visual search is robust to distraction by irrelevant auditory stimuli unless observers have to additionally monitor information from the auditory modality for a secondary task, indicating that our attentional system can block auditory stimuli from interfering with visual search as long as the auditory modality is completely irrelevant. By inducing auditory distraction on visual search, our experimental design opens new avenues for research on the nature and handling of auditory interference that links more closely with the vast scientific literature on visual distraction.

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“…For instance, the feature-coding system may have become more sensitive to valence-preferred colors, either due to lower level perceptual learning or long-term memory-based biasing of the relevant feature detectors. Therefore, down-scaling of color signals in the priority computation would curtail the potential of items appearing in the valence-preferred color (‘distractor’) to capture attention, because the competition for selection is almost always resolved in favor of the unique shape signal (Allenmark et al, 2019 ; Qiu et al, 2023 ; Tsai et al, 2023 ), making it hard to demonstrate attentional-interference effects.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Task-irrelevant valence-preferred colors boost visual search for a singleton-shape target

Stanković,

Müller,

Shi

2023

Psychological Research

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Some studies have suggested that emotion-associated features might influence attentional capture. However, demonstrating valence-dependent distractor interference has proven challenging, possibly due to the neglect of individuals’ color–valence preferences in standard, averaged reaction-time (RT) measures. To address this, we investigated valence-driven attentional-capture using an association phase in which emotionally neutral vs. positive-feedback photographs were paired with two alternative target colors, red vs. green. This was followed by a test phase requiring participants to search for a pop-out shape target in the presence or absence of an emotion-associated color. In Experiments 1 and 2, this color could only appear in a distractor, while in Experiment 3, it appeared in the target. Analyzing the standard, averaged RT measures, we found no significant valence association or valence-modulated attentional capture. However, correlational analyses revealed a positive relationship between individual participants’ color–valence preference during the association phase and their valence-based effect during the test phase. Moreover, most individuals favored red over green in the association phase, leading to marked color-related asymmetries in the average measures. Crucially, the presence of the valence-preferred color anywhere in the test display facilitated RTs. This effect persisted even when the color appeared in one of the distractors (Experiments 1 and 2), at variance with this distractor capturing attention. These findings suggest that task-irrelevant valence-preferred color signals were registered pre-attentively and boosted performance, likely by raising the general (non-spatial) alertness level. However, these signals were likely kept out of attentional-priority computation to prevent inadvertent attentional capture.

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Little engagement of attention by salient distractors defined in a different dimension or modality to the visual search target

Cited by 7 publications

References 128 publications

Tracking the misallocation and reallocation of spatial attention towards auditory stimuli

Tracking the misallocation and reallocation of spatial attention towards auditory stimuli

The surprising robustness of visual search against concurrent auditory distraction.

Task-irrelevant valence-preferred colors boost visual search for a singleton-shape target

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