On the electrophysiological evidence for the capture of visual attention.

McDonald, John J.; Green, Jessica J.; Jannati, Ali; Lollo, Vincent Di

doi:10.1037/a0030510

Cited by 94 publications

(113 citation statements)

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“…Using the N2pc, researchers have found that salient distractors are sometimes attended (Hickey et al, 2006;McDonald et al, 2013) and sometimes ignored (Wykowska andSchübo, 2010, 2011;Kiss et al, 2012;Töllner et al, 2012;. All of these prior studies involved cross-dimension competition, suggesting that the ability to ignore the distractor depends critically on a dimensional weighting mechanism.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This negativity likely reflects contralateral delay activity (CDA) that has been associated with active representation of items in visual short-term memory (even in visual-search tasks; Vogel and Machizawa, 2004;Jolicoeur et al, 2008). In compound-search tasks, this active representation might be required for the identification of the relevant stimulus features (e.g., orientation of the line inside the target shape; Mazza et al, 2007;McDonald et al, 2013). Finally, a small distractor-elicited N2pc is visible 200 -220 ms after display onset in the slow-response ERPs (Fig.…”

Section: Comparison Of P D For Fast-and Slow-response Trialsmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Suppression of Salient Objects Prevents Distraction in Visual Search

2014

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To find objects of interest in a cluttered and continually changing visual environment, humans must often ignore salient stimuli that are not currently relevant to the task at hand. Recent neuroimaging results indicate that the ability to prevent salience-driven distraction depends on the current level of attentional control activity in frontal cortex, but the specific mechanism by which this control activity prevents salience-driven distraction is still poorly understood. Here, we asked whether salience-driven distraction is prevented by suppressing salient distractors or by preferentially up-weighting the relevant visual dimension. We found that salient distractors were suppressed even when they resided in the same feature dimension as the target (that is, when dimensional weighting was not a viable selection strategy). Our neurophysiological measure of suppression-the P D component of the event-related potential-was associated with variations in the amount of time it took to perform the search task: distractors triggered the P D on fast-response trials, but on slow-response trials they triggered activity associated with working memory representation instead. These results demonstrate that during search salience-driven distraction is mitigated by a suppressive mechanism that reduces the salience of potentially distracting visual objects.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Comparison Of P D For Fast-and Slow-response Trialsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Suppression of Salient Objects Prevents Distraction in Visual Search

2014

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“…According to other theories, voluntary control of attention can prevent salient distractors from capturing attention, thereby enabling rapid deployment of attention to task-relevant objects (42)(43)(44). Recent ERP evidence has indicated that salient distractors do not capture attention (24,(44)(45)(46)(47)(48), but those studies were designed to determine whether the average individual attends to salient distractors. Functional neuroimaging studies have reported frontal lobe activity that correlates negatively with behavioral measures of attention capture) (49,50).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inability to suppress salient distractors predicts low visual working memory capacity

Gaspar

Christie

Prime

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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154

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According to contemporary accounts of visual working memory (vWM), the ability to efficiently filter relevant from irrelevant information contributes to an individual's overall vWM capacity. Although there is mounting evidence for this hypothesis, very little is known about the precise filtering mechanism responsible for controlling access to vWM and for differentiating low-and high-capacity individuals. Theoretically, the inefficient filtering observed in lowcapacity individuals might be specifically linked to problems enhancing relevant items, suppressing irrelevant items, or both. To find out, we recorded neurophysiological activity associated with attentional selection and active suppression during a competitive visual search task. We show that high-capacity individuals actively suppress salient distractors, whereas low-capacity individuals are unable to suppress salient distractors in time to prevent those items from capturing attention. These results demonstrate that individual differences in vWM capacity are associated with the timing of a specific attentional control operation that suppresses processing of salient but irrelevant visual objects and restricts their access to higher stages of visual processing.suppression | attention | working memory | event-related potentials | distractor positivity E ach day, human observers perform numerous tasks that require temporary storage of information about objects in the surrounding visual environment. Laboratory studies have revealed substantial variability across neurologically healthy adults in the ability to keep such visuospatial information in mind (1-4). Originally, this variability was attributed to individual differences in the capacity of visual working memory (vWM). According to this account, the maximum amount of information that can be entered into vWM at one time, or the number of "slots" available to store the information, varies across individuals (3,(5)(6)(7)(8). Other contemporary accounts, however, relate the individual differences in vWM performance to variability in attentional control, as well as capacity (9-12). One such attention-based perspective holds that when faced with multiple visual objects, low-capacity individuals have difficulty filtering relevant from irrelevant information (11-15). More specifically, this filtering-efficiency hypothesis proposes that attention regulates the flow of sensory information to the limited-capacity vWM system and that consuming capacity with task-irrelevant information effectively reduces storage capacity for task-relevant items. This hypothesis helps to explain why lowcapacity individuals sometimes store more items in vWM than do high-capacity individuals: whereas high-capacity individuals encode only task-relevant items, low-capacity individuals encode irrelevant items along with task-relevant items (15).Although there is mounting evidence for the filtering-efficiency hypothesis, little is known about the precise mechanism responsible for controlling access to vWM or how its operation differs in low...

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“…The P D often appears exclusively in response to to-be-ignored salient items in the absence of an N2pc component (e.g., Gaspar, Christie, Prime, Jolicoeur, & McDonald, 2016; Gaspar & McDonald, 2014; Jannati, Gaspar, & McDonald, 2013; Sawaki & Luck, 2010, 2011). The P D also has a larger amplitude on fast-response trials than slow-response trials (e.g., Gaspar & McDonald, 2014; Jannati, Gaspar, & McDonald, 2013; McDonald, Green, Jannati, & Di Lollo, 2013), suggesting that suppression of a salient item allows faster detection of the target stimulus. Another study of oculomotor capture found that a P D was present when the participant successfully avoided making an eye movement to a salient distractor but was absent when the distractor was fixated (Weaver, van Zoest, & Hickey, 2017), consistent with the hypothesis that the P D component reflects a suppressive process.…”

Section: The Signal Suppression Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Combined Electrophysiological and Behavioral Evidence for the Suppression of Salient Distractors

Gaspelin

Luck

2018

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

201

257

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Researchers have long debated how salient-but-irrelevant features guide visual attention. Pure stimulus-driven theories claim that salient stimuli automatically capture attention irrespective of goals, whereas pure goal-driven theories propose that an individual’s attentional control settings determine whether salient stimuli capture attention. However, recent studies have suggested a hybrid model in which salient stimuli attract visual attention but can be actively suppressed by top-down attentional mechanisms. Support for this hybrid model has primarily come from event-related potential (ERP) studies demonstrating that salient stimuli which fail to capture attention also elicit a distractor positivity (PD) component, a putative neural index of suppression. Other support comes from a handful of behavioral studies showing that processing at the salient locations is inhibited compared to other locations. The current study was designed to link the behavioral and neural evidence by combining ERP recordings with an experimental paradigm that provides a behavioral measure of suppression. We found that when a salient distractor item elicited the PD component, processing at the location of this distractor was suppressed below baseline levels. Furthermore, the magnitude of behavioral suppression and the magnitude of the PD component covaried across participants. These findings provide a crucial connection between the behavioral and neural measures of suppression, which opens the door to using the PD component to assess the timing and neural substrates of the behaviorally observed suppression.

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On the electrophysiological evidence for the capture of visual attention.

Cited by 94 publications

References 38 publications

Suppression of Salient Objects Prevents Distraction in Visual Search

Suppression of Salient Objects Prevents Distraction in Visual Search

Inability to suppress salient distractors predicts low visual working memory capacity

Combined Electrophysiological and Behavioral Evidence for the Suppression of Salient Distractors

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