Salient‐but‐irrelevant stimuli cause attentional capture in difficult, but attentional suppression in easy visual search

Barras, Caroline; Kerzel, Dirk

doi:10.1111/psyp.12962

Cited by 50 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…This is a consistent finding with the previous study showing that the capture effect by a salient singleton distractor increased as search efficiency decreased (Barras and Kerzel, 2017b). Further, these results are relevant to recent findings by Barras and Kerzel (2017a). They showed that there was attentional capture by the color distractor in inefficient search, whereas there was suppression to the distractor in efficient search.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

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Search efficiency is not sufficient: The nature of search modulates stimulus-driven attention

Jung

Han

Yoonki

2018

Atten Percept Psychophys

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It has long been debated whether or not a salient stimulus automatically attracts people's attention in visual search. Recent findings showed that a salient stimulus is likely to capture attention especially when the search process was inefficient due to high levels of competition between the target and distractors. Expanding these studies, the present study proposes that a specific nature of visual search, as well as search efficiency, determines whether or not a salient, task-irrelevant singleton stimulus captures attention. To test this proposition, we conducted three experiments, in which participants performed two visual search tasks whose underlying mechanisms are known to be different: orientation-feature search and Landolt-C search tasks. We found that color singleton distractors captured attention when participants performed the orientation-feature search task. The magnitude of this capture effect increased as search efficiency decreased. On the contrary, the capture by singleton distractors was not observed under the Landolt-C search task. This differential pattern of capture effect was not due to differences in search efficiency across the search tasks; even when search efficiency was controlled for, stimulus-driven capture of attention by a salient distractor was found only under the feature search. Based on these results, the present study suggests that in addition to search efficiency, the nature of search strategy and the extent to which attentional control is strained play crucial roles in observing stimulus-driven attentional capture in visual search.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

“…The modulation of attentional capture by search efficiency is also supported by recent neuroscienfic evidence (Barras and Kerzel, 2017a). In the difficult visual search of this study, an N2pc component of the event-related potential (ERP) occurred to the color singleton distractor.…”

supporting

confidence: 55%

Search efficiency is not sufficient: The nature of search modulates stimulus-driven attention

Jung

Han

Yoonki

2018

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…Further, the color of the nontargets (and distractor, if applicable) changed randomly from trial to trial between green and red to increase interference effects compared to constant colors . In a related EEG-study, we used the same stimuli and confirmed that the saliency of the color singleton did not vary between high and low shapebased similarity (Barras & Kerzel, 2017). In that study, we asked observers to respond to the color singleton and varied the similarity between an irrelevant shape singleton (i.e., the square) and the nontarget shapes (i.e., circles vs. diamonds).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 81%

Target-nontarget similarity decreases search efficiency and increases stimulus-driven control in visual search

Barras

Kerzel

2017

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Some points of criticism against the idea that attentional selection is controlled by bottom-up processing were dispelled by the attentional window account. The attentional window account claims that saliency computations during visual search are only performed for stimuli inside the attentional window. Therefore, a small attentional window may avoid attentional capture by salient distractors because it is likely that the salient distractor is located outside the window. In contrast, a large attentional window increases the chances of attentional capture by a salient distractor. Large and small attentional windows have been associated with efficient (parallel) and inefficient (serial) search, respectively. We compared the effect of a salient color singleton on visual search for a shape singleton during efficient and inefficient search. To vary search efficiency, the nontarget shapes were either similar or dissimilar with respect to the shape singleton. We found that interference from the color singleton was larger with inefficient than efficient search, which contradicts the attentional window account. While inconsistent with the attentional window account, our results are predicted by computational models of visual search. Because of target-nontarget similarity, the target was less salient with inefficient than efficient search. Consequently, the relative saliency of the color distractor was higher with inefficient than with efficient search. Accordingly, stronger attentional capture resulted. Overall, the present results show that bottom-up control by stimulus saliency is stronger when search is difficult, which is inconsistent with the attentional window account.

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“…Recent studies have indicated that the P D component is a neurophysiological marker of an active suppression mechanism (Barras & Kerzel, , ; Hickey et al., ; Sawaki et al., ). Notably, this positive component has been given various names in previous studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional selection and suppression in children and adults

Sun

Wang

Huang

et al. 2018

Developmental Science

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The fundamental role of covert spatial attention is to enhance the processing of attended items while simultaneously ignoring irrelevant items. However, relatively little is known about how brain electrophysiological activities associated with target selection and distractor suppression are involved as they develop and become fully functional. The current study aimed to identify the neurophysiological bases of the development of covert spatial attention, focusing on electroencephalographic (EEG) markers of attentional selection (N2pc) and suppression (P ). EEG data were collected from healthy young adults and typically developing children (9-15 years old) as they searched for a shape singleton target in either the absence or the presence of a salient-but-irrelevant color singleton distractor. The ERP results showed that a lateral shape target elicited a smaller N2pc in children compared with adults regardless of whether a distractor was present or not. Moreover, the target-elicited N2pc was always followed by a similar positivity in both age groups. Counterintuitively, a lateral salient-but-irrelevant distractor elicited a large P in children with low behavioral accuracy, whereas high-accuracy children exhibited a small and "adult-like" P . More importantly, we found no evidence for a correlation between the target-elicited N2pc and the distractor-elicited P in either age group. Our results provide neurophysiological evidence for the developmental differences between target selection and distractor suppression. Compared with adults, 9-15-year-old children deploy insufficient attentional selection resources to targets but use "adult-like" or even more attentional suppression resources to resist irrelevant distractors. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhWapx0d75I.

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Salient‐but‐irrelevant stimuli cause attentional capture in difficult, but attentional suppression in easy visual search

Cited by 50 publications

References 46 publications

Search efficiency is not sufficient: The nature of search modulates stimulus-driven attention

Search efficiency is not sufficient: The nature of search modulates stimulus-driven attention

Target-nontarget similarity decreases search efficiency and increases stimulus-driven control in visual search

Attentional selection and suppression in children and adults

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