Attentional control settings prevent abrupt onsets from capturing visual spatial attention

Abstract

When a visual distractor appears earlier than a visual target in a target-detection task, response time is faster if the distractor appears at the same location as the target. When a visual distractor appears concurrently with a visual target in a target-detection task, response time is slowed relative to when no distractor is presented. Both effects have been taken as evidence of the capture of visual spatial attention, yet capture by early distractors is contingent on top-down attentional control settings (ACSs), and capture by concurrent distractors is not. The present study evaluated whether this incongruity is attributable to the timing of distractors (earlier than vs. concurrently with the target), or to the employed comparisons (same location/different location vs. distractor/no distractor). Using a task that presented both early and concurrent distractors, we observed that, regardless of timing, capture was contingent on ACSs when assessed by the same-location/different-location comparison. This result suggests that, although irrelevant stimuli cause nonspatial purely stimulus-driven effects, the capture of visual spatial attention is contingent on ACSs.