Susceptible to Distraction: Children Lack Top-Down Control Over Spatial Attention Capture

Gaspelin, Nicholas; Margett-Jordan, Tessa; Ruthruff, Eric

doi:10.1037/e528942014-621

Cited by 12 publications

(26 citation statements)

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“…In this respect, it is important to note that the relational account can accommodate many previous behavioral and electrophysiological findings that were interpreted in favor of feature‐specific accounts, including feature similarity accounts and the optimal tuning account. This holds because most studies varied not only the feature of the cue (target‐matching vs. nonmatching feature value) but also the relative feature of the cue (target‐matching vs. nonmatching relative feature), and thus cannot distinguish between the different views (e.g., Folk & Remington, ; Gaspelin, Margett‐Jordan, & Ruthruff, ; Lien et al, ; Lien, Ruthruff, & Johnston, ). For example, in search for a red target among white nontargets, observing attentional capture by a red cue but not a green cue (e.g., Folk & Remington, ) is consistent both with a relational account and a feature‐specific account, as the red cue matches both the target feature (red) and the target's relative feature (redder), whereas the green cue matches neither the target feature (red) nor its relative feature (redder).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional guidance by relative features: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

et al. 2016

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Citation for published item:h¤ onhmmerD tFqF nd qruertD eF nd uerzelD hF nd fekerD FsF @PHITA 9ettentionl guidne y reltive fetures X ehviorl nd eletrophysiologil evideneF9D syhophysiologyFD SQ @UAF ppF IHUREIHVQF Further information on publisher's website: httpsXGGdoiForgGIHFIIIIGpsypFIPTRS Publisher's copyright statement: his is the epted version of the following rtileX h¤ onhmmerD tF qFD qruertD eFD uerzelD hF nd fekerD F sF @PHITAD ettentionl guidne y reltive feturesX fehviorl nd eletrophysiologil evideneF syhophysiologyD SQ@UAX IHUREIHVQD whih hs een pulished in (nl form t httpsXGGdoiForgGIHFIIIIGpsypFIPTRSF his rtile my e used for nonEommeril purposes in ordne ith iley erms nd gonditions for selfErhivingF Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Attentional guidance by relative features 2 Abstract Our ability to select task-relevant information from cluttered visual environments is widely believed to be due to our ability to tune attention to the particular elementary feature values of a sought-after target (e.g., red, orange, yellow). By contrast, recent findings showed that attention is often tuned to feature relationships, viz., features that the target has relative to irrelevant features in the context (e.g., redder, yellower; Becker, 2010). However, the evidence for such a relational account is so far exclusively based on behavioral measures that do not allow a safe inference about early perceptual processes. The present study provides a critical test of the relational account, by measuring an electrophysiological marker in the EEG of participants (N2pc) in response to briefly presented distractors (cues) that could either match the physical features of the target or its relative features. In a first experiment, the target color and non-target color was kept constant across trials. In line with a relational account, we found that only cues with the same relative color as the target were attended, regardless of whether the cues had the same physical color as the target. In a second experiment, we demonstrate that attention is biased to the exact target feature value when the target is embedded in a randomly varying context. Taken together, these results provide the first electrophysiological evidence that attention can modulate early perceptual processes differently; in a contextdependent manner vs. a context-independent manner, resulting in marked differences in the range of colors that can attract attention.Attentional guidance by relative features 3

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional guidance by relative features: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

et al. 2016

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“…Many researchers have suggested the need for a more coherent account of attentional capture (Awh, Belopolsky, & Theeuwes, 2012). Resolving this empirical debate with a more nuanced account would greatly benefit our ability to predict eye movements in naturalistic scenes (Henderson, 2003), design more accurate models of visual search (Wolfe, Cave, & Franzel, 1989; Wolfe, 2007), and understand the development of cognitive control in typical (Gaspelin, Margett-Jordan, & Ruthruff, 2014) and atypical populations (Leonard, Robinson, Hahn, Gold, & Luck, 2014). …”

Section: Suppression Of Overt Attentional Capture By Salient Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Suppression of overt attentional capture by salient-but-irrelevant color singletons

Gaspelin

Leonard

Luck

2016

Atten Percept Psychophys

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For over two decades, researchers have debated the nature of cognitive control in the guidance of visual attention. Stimulus-driven theories claim that salient stimuli automatically capture attention, whereas goal-driven theories propose that an individual’s attentional control settings determine whether salient stimuli capture attention. In the current study, we tested a hybrid account called the signal suppression hypothesis, which claims that all stimuli automatically generate a salience signal but that this signal can be actively suppressed by top-down attentional mechanisms. Previous behavioral and electrophysiological research has shown that participants can suppress covert shifts of attention to salient-but-irrelevant color singletons. In the current study, we used eyetracking methods to determine whether participants can also suppress overt shifts of attention to irrelevant singletons. We found that, under conditions that promote active suppression of the irrelevant singletons, overt attention was less likely to be directed toward the salient distractors than toward nonsalient distractors. This result provides direct evidence that people can suppress salient-but-irrelevant singletons below baseline levels. Keywords: attentional capture, visual search, suppression, eye movements

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“…Studies using different tasks have also revealed findings that confirm the interpretation of late developing top-down attentional processes. For example, children have been found to be more vulnerable to capture by irrelevant stimuli than adults, presumably because their top-down attentional processes are still developing (Gaspelin, Margett-Jordan, & Ruthruff, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the VAN, children showed greater functional connectivity than adults (Farrant & Uddin, 2015). The authors suggested that this overconnectivity in the VAN provides evidence that bottom-up processes may be overrepresented in the children's brain and speculated that it can perhaps explain why children are susceptible to interruption by environmental stimuli and are less able to maintain activities requiring top-down attentional control (Bunge, Dudukovic, Thomason, Vaidya, & Gabrieli, 2002;Gaspelin et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of spatial suppression surrounding the focus of visual attention

2019

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In adulthood, research has demonstrated that surrounding the spatial location of attentional focus is a suppressive field, resulting from top-down attention promoting the processing of relevant stimuli and inhibiting surrounding distractors (e.g., Hopf et al., 2006). It is not fully known, however, how this phenomenon manifests during development. This is an important question since attention processes are likely even more critical in development because of their potential impact on learning and day-today activities. The current study examined whether spatial suppression surrounding the focus of visual attention, a predicted by-product of top-down attentional modulation, is observed in development. A wide age range separated in six incremental age levels was included, allowing for a detailed examination of potential differences in the effect of attention on visual processing across development. Participants between 12 and 27 years of age exhibited spatial suppression surrounding their focus of visual attention. Their accuracy increased as a function of the separation distance between a spatially cued (and attended) target and a second target, suggesting that a ring of suppression surrounded the attended target. Attentional surround suppression was not observed in 8to 11-years-olds, even with a longer spatial cue presentation time, demonstrating that the lack of the effect at these ages is not due to slowed attentional feedback processes. Our findings demonstrate that topdown attentional processes exhibit functional maturity beginning around 12 years of age with continuing maturation of their expression until 17, which likely impacts education and the diagnosis of visual and cognitive clinical pathologies.

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Susceptible to Distraction: Children Lack Top-Down Control Over Spatial Attention Capture

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Attentional guidance by relative features: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

Attentional guidance by relative features: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

Suppression of overt attentional capture by salient-but-irrelevant color singletons

Development of spatial suppression surrounding the focus of visual attention

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