Sex Differences in Temporal but Not Spatial Attentional Capture.

Tomoe Inukai,Jun I Kawahara

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01893

Abstract

The accuracy of detecting or identifying a target decreases when a salient distractor is presented. This decrease is explained by the temporal or spatial diversion of attention to the distractor and thus is referred to as attentional capture. Using temporal and spatial visual search tasks, we examined whether there are sex differences in attentional capture. In Experiment 1A, a temporal visual search task measured attentional capture in the temporal domain by asking participants (97 men and 92 women) to identify a target embedded in a rapid stream of nontarget letters while ignoring a preceding peripheral distractor. In Experiment 2, a spatial visual search task measured attentional capture in the spatial domain by asking participants (146 men and 83 women) to detect a target among spatially distributed nontarget items while ignoring a distractor presented simultaneously. Our results indicate that attentional capture occurred in both tasks. In Experiment 1A, the magnitude of capture was significantly larger for women than men. In Experiment 1B, we confirmed sex differences in temporal attentional capture by recruiting a new set of participants (141 men and 85 women). In Experiment 2, the magnitude of capture was comparable between the sexes. These results suggest that women are more sensitive to bottom-up signals than men when they engage in a temporal search task and could be explained in terms of sex differences in the ability of adjusting the size of attentional window, within which attention is allocated to the most salient item.

Highlights

IntroductionStudies of cognitive function indicate that sex differences contribute to differences in cognitive performance among individuals
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cognition, a section of the journal Frontiers in PsychologyReceived: 16 March 2018 Accepted: 14 September 2018Published: 12 October 2018Citation: Inukai T and Kawahara JI (2018) Sex Differences in Temporal but NotSpatial Attentional Capture
The accuracy of target identification was less when the distractors were presented than when no distractors were presented. This is a hallmark of attentional capture, suggesting that temporal attention was diverted to the location of the peripheral distractor

Summary

Introduction

Studies of cognitive function indicate that sex differences contribute to differences in cognitive performance among individuals. There are sex-related differences in verbal and visuospatial tasks (e.g., Weiss et al, 2003; Rubia et al, 2010). Women are likely to outperform men on verbal fluency tasks, such as the Chicago Word Fluency Test, whereas men are likely to outperform women on navigation tasks (e.g., Sandstrom et al, 1998; Burton et al, 2005). Given that visuospatial information is tightly related to human behavior in selecting objects and in locomotion and spatial navigation, it is reasonable to assume that sex differences would be found when participants selectively choose a target from nontargets in the spatial domain. Some studies (Brown, 2013) have demonstrated sex differences in attentional functions involved in spatial selection

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Conclusion