Voluntary choice tasks increase control settings and reduce capture

Abstract

ABSTRACT In their article, Luck et al. ([2021]. Progress toward resolving the attentional capture debate. Visual Cognition, 29(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2020.1848949) outline alternative hypotheses regarding the cognitive mechanisms that modulate attention capture. This commentary addresses how control signals can be used to modulate feature gain control prior to saliency computations, in addition to the implicitly learned effects of alternate selection histories. We suggest that voluntary choice paradigms provide much stronger task-induced attentional control than pre-trial cueing, and allow a comparison of the same search stimuli under different control states. We argue that voluntary task choice results in an attenuation of salience signals, eliminating attention capture, although response time distractor costs remain.