Account Of Attentional Capture Research Articles

Process-Sensitivity of the Changing-State Effect – Three Methodological Issues Regarding the Current Evidence Base

ABSTRACT The finding that irrelevant sound that changes from one token to the next disrupts serial recall performance more strongly than steady-state sound is well established as the changing-state-effect in the auditory distraction literature. Two of the dominant accounts of irrelevant sound effects differ in whether they expect the changing-state effect to be process-sensitive. According to the duplex-mechanism account, changing-state effects are restricted to tasks in which participants process order information. According to an attentional capture account, they should occur independent of the role of order information. In this review, we give an overview of studies investigating the process-sensitivity of the changing-state effect and discuss three methodological issues with the current evidence base and how they have already been addressed in some studies. One issue concerns the difficulties arising from comparing tasks that are supposed to differ only in the necessity to retain order information, but that may also differ in other aspects. A second issue concerns the need to consider what participants actually do when performing a task rather than to rely solely on task analyses. The final issue concerns the pitfalls associated with testing for null effects. Based on these considerations, we conclude that the question of process-sensitivity is far from settled and make suggestions for how to minimize these problems in future research.

The effects of Chinese and English background music on Chinese reading comprehension

The study investigated the influence of the language of background music with lyrics (Chinese and English) on Chinese reading comprehension after controlling for English listening proficiency. A total of 38 Chinese English learners from a university were enrolled in a within-subject design experiment. All participants were exposed to three background conditions: silence, English background music with lyrics (EL-BGM), and Chinese background music with lyrics (CL-BGM). The results showed that participants’ Chinese reading performance was negatively influenced by EL-BGM, with significantly lower reading efficiency and reading rate. Participants with better English listening ability had higher Chinese reading efficiency under the EL-BGM condition. Possible explanations for these findings in terms of the interference-by-process hypothesis, the attentional capture account, and the duplex-mechanism account are discussed.

Direct evidence for the optimal tuning of attention.

In search arrays where the target is presented with similar nontarget stimuli, it is advantageous to shift the internal representation of the target features away from the nontarget features. According to optimal tuning theory (Navalpakkam & Itti, 2007), the shift of the attentional template increases the signal-to-noise ratio because the overlap of neural populations representing the target and nontarget features is reduced. While previous research has shown that the internal representation of the target is indeed shifted, there is little evidence in favor of a shift in attentional selectivity. To fill this gap, we used a cue-target paradigm where shorter reaction times (RTs) at cued than at uncued locations indicate attentional capture by the cue. Consistent with previous research, we found that attentional capture decreased with decreasing similarity between cue and target color. Importantly, target-similar cue colors closer to the nontarget colors captured attention less than target-similar cue colors further away from the nontarget colors, suggesting that attentional selectivity was biased away from the nontarget colors. The shift of attentional selectivity matched the shift of the memory representation of the target. Further, the bias in attentional capture was reduced when the nontarget colors were more distinct from the target. We discuss alternative accounts of the data, such as saliency-driven capture and the relational account of attentional capture (Becker, 2010), but conclude that optimal tuning theory provides the best explanation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Attentional capture by alcohol-related stimuli may be activated involuntarily by top-down search goals

Previous research has found that the attention of social drinkers is preferentially oriented towards alcohol-related stimuli (attentional capture). This is argued to play a role in escalating craving for alcohol that can result in hazardous drinking. According to incentive theories of drug addiction, the stimuli associated with the drug reward acquire learned incentive salience and grab attention. However, it is not clear whether the mechanism by which this bias is created is a voluntary or an automatic one, although some evidence suggests a stimulus-driven mechanism. Here, we test for the first time whether this attentional capture could reflect an involuntary consequence of a goal-driven mechanism. Across three experiments, participants were given search goals to detect either an alcoholic or a non-alcoholic object (target) in a stream of briefly presented objects unrelated to the target. Prior to the target, a task-irrelevant parafoveal distractor appeared. This could either be congruent or incongruent with the current search goal. Applying a meta-analysis, we combined the results across the three experiments and found consistent evidence of goal-driven attentional capture, whereby alcohol distractors impeded target detection when the search goal was for alcohol. By contrast, alcohol distractors did not interfere with target detection, whilst participants were searching for a non-alcoholic category. A separate experiment revealed that the goal-driven capture effect was not found when participants held alcohol features active in memory but did not intentionally search for them. These findings suggest a strong goal-driven account of attentional capture by alcohol cues in social drinkers.

The capture of attention and gaze in the search for emotional photographic faces

ABSTRACTCan emotional expressions automatically attract attention in virtue of their affective content? Previous studies mostly used emotional faces (e.g., angry or happy faces) in visual search tasks to assess whether affective contents can automatically attract attention. However, the evidence in support of affective attentional capture is still contentious, as the studies either: (1) did not render affective contents irrelevant to the task, (2) used affective stimuli that were perceptually similar to the target, (3) did not rule out factors occurring later in the visual search process (e.g., disengagement of attention), or (4) used only schematic emotional faces that do not clearly convey affective contents. The present study remedied these shortcomings by measuring the eye movements of observers while they searched for emotional photographic faces. To examine whether irrelevant emotional faces are selected because of their perceptual similarity to the target (top-down), or because of their emotional expressions, we also assessed the perceptual similarity between the emotional distractors and the target. The results show that happy and angry faces can indeed automatically attract attention and the gaze. Perceptual similarity modulated the effect only weakly, indicating that capture was mainly due to bottom-up, stimulus-driven processes. However, post-selectional processes of disengaging attention from the emotional expressions contributed strongly to the overall disruptive effects of emotional expressions. Taken together, these results support a stimulus-driven account of attentional capture by emotional faces, and highlight the need to use measures that can distinguish between early and late processes in visual search.

A Microsaccadic Account of Attentional Capture and Inhibition of Return in Posner Cueing.

Microsaccades exhibit systematic oscillations in direction after spatial cueing, and these oscillations correlate with facilitatory and inhibitory changes in behavioral performance in the same tasks. However, independent of cueing, facilitatory and inhibitory changes in visual sensitivity also arise pre-microsaccadically. Given such pre-microsaccadic modulation, an imperative question to ask becomes: how much of task performance in spatial cueing may be attributable to these peri-movement changes in visual sensitivity? To investigate this question, we adopted a theoretical approach. We developed a minimalist model in which: (1) microsaccades are repetitively generated using a rise-to-threshold mechanism, and (2) pre-microsaccadic target onset is associated with direction-dependent modulation of visual sensitivity, as found experimentally. We asked whether such a model alone is sufficient to account for performance dynamics in spatial cueing. Our model not only explained fine-scale microsaccade frequency and direction modulations after spatial cueing, but it also generated classic facilitatory (i.e., attentional capture) and inhibitory [i.e., inhibition of return (IOR)] effects of the cue on behavioral performance. According to the model, cues reflexively reset the oculomotor system, which unmasks oscillatory processes underlying microsaccade generation; once these oscillatory processes are unmasked, “attentional capture” and “IOR” become direct outcomes of pre-microsaccadic enhancement or suppression, respectively. Interestingly, our model predicted that facilitatory and inhibitory effects on behavior should appear as a function of target onset relative to microsaccades even without prior cues. We experimentally validated this prediction for both saccadic and manual responses. We also established a potential causal mechanism for the microsaccadic oscillatory processes hypothesized by our model. We used retinal-image stabilization to experimentally control instantaneous foveal motor error during the presentation of peripheral cues, and we found that post-cue microsaccadic oscillations were severely disrupted. This suggests that microsaccades in spatial cueing tasks reflect active oculomotor correction of foveal motor error, rather than presumed oscillatory covert attentional processes. Taken together, our results demonstrate that peri-microsaccadic changes in vision can go a long way in accounting for some classic behavioral phenomena.

Contingent attentional capture triggers the congruency sequence effect

The congruency effect in distracter interference tasks is often reduced after incongruent as compared to congruent trials. Here, we investigated whether this congruency sequence effect (CSE) is triggered by (a) attentional adaptation resulting from perceptual conflict or (b) contingent attentional capture arising from distracters that possess target-defining perceptual features. To distinguish between these hypotheses, we varied the perceptual format in which a distracter (word or arrow) and a subsequent target (word or arrow) appeared in a prime-probe task. In Experiment 1, we varied these formats across four blocks of a factorial design, such that targets always appeared in a single perceptual format. Consistent with both hypotheses, we observed a CSE only when the distracter appeared in the same perceptual format as the target. In Experiment 2, we varied these formats randomly across trials within each block, such that targets appeared randomly in either format. Consistent with the attentional capture account but inconsistent with the perceptual conflict account, we observed equivalent CSEs in the same and different perceptual format conditions. These findings show for the first time that contingent attentional capture plays an important role in triggering the CSE.

Facilitating masked visual target identification with auditory oddball stimuli

When identifying a rapidly masked visual target display in a stream of visual distractor displays, a high-frequency tone (presented in synchrony with the target display) in a stream of low-tone distractors results in better performance than when the same low tone accompanies each visual display (Ngo and Spence in Atten Percept Psychophys 72:1938-1947, 2010; Vroomen and de Gelder in J Exp Psychol Hum 26:1583-1590, 2000). In the present study, we tested three oddball conditions: a louder tone presented amongst quieter tones, a quieter tone presented amongst louder tones, and the absence of a tone, within an otherwise identical tone sequence. Across three experiments, all three oddball conditions resulted in the crossmodal facilitation of participants' visual target identification performance. These results therefore suggest that salient oddball stimuli in the form of deviating tones, when synchronized with the target, may be sufficient to capture participants' attention and facilitate visual target identification. The fact that the absence of a sound in an otherwise-regular sequence of tones also facilitated performance suggests that multisensory integration cannot provide an adequate account for the 'freezing' effect. Instead, an attentional capture account is proposed to account for the benefits of oddball cuing in Vroomen and de Gelder's task.

It's all about the transient: Intra-saccadic onset stimuli do not capture attention

An abrupt onset stimulus was presented while the participants' eyes were in motion. Because of saccadic suppression, participants did not perceive the visual transient that normally accompanies the sudden appearance of a stimulus. In contrast to the typical finding that the presentation of an abrupt onset captures attention and interferes with the participants' responses, we found that an intra-saccadic abrupt onset does not capture attention: It has no effect beyond that of increasing the set-size of the search array by one item. This finding favours the local transient account of attentional capture over the novel object hypothesis.

Verbal short-term memory reflects the organization of long-term memory: Further evidence from short-term memory for emotional words

Many studies suggest that long-term lexical–semantic knowledge is an important determinant of verbal short-term memory (STM) performance. This study explored the impact of emotional valence on word immediate serial recall as a further lexico-semantic long-term memory (LTM) effect on STM. This effect is particularly interesting for the study of STM–LTM interactions since emotional words not only activate specific lexico-semantic LTM features but also capture attentional resources, and hence allow for the study of both LTM and attentional factors on STM tasks. In Experiments 1 and 2, we observed a robust effect of emotional valence on pure list recall in both young and elderly adults, with higher recall performance for emotional lists as opposed to neutral lists, as predicted by increased LTM support for emotional words. In Experiments 3 and 4 however, using mixed lists, it was the lists containing a minority of emotional words which led to higher recall performance over lists containing a majority of emotional words. This was predicted by a weak version of the attentional capture account. These data add new evidence to the theoretical position that LTM knowledge is a critical determinant of STM performance, with further, list type dependent intervention of attentional factors.

You Cannot Ignore It: Attention to ‘Irrelevant’ Sound during a Pre-exposure Period Does Not Reduce its Disruption of Serial Recall

The deleterious effects of background sound on performance are documented in both the applied and auditory distraction literature (e.g., Perham, Banbury & Jones, 2007a, 2007b). However, debate surrounds whether background sound can be habituated to through pre-exposure. Potential support comes from the attentional capture account where irrelevant sound captures attention through an orienting response (OR) and habituation of this reduces auditory distraction (Cowan, 1995). However, there is a difference between the original conception of the OR and that proposed by Cowan: the former required attention to stimuli whereas the latter required inattention (Jones, Macken, & Mosdell, 1997). This conceptual difference was tested using pre- and post-exposure serial recall performance under quiet, matched (attention to same sound during exposure and serial recall) and mismatched (attention to alternative sound during exposure and serial recall) conditions. The lack of difference between conditions suggests that attending to irrelevant sound does not reduce auditory distraction.

The identity intrusion effect: Attentional capture or perceptual load?

Theeuwes and Burger (1998) concluded that irrelevant colour singletons can capture attention within the context of a serial search task by showing that the identity of these singletons can intrude on target processing. However, other researchers have suggested that such distractor interference may arise from a passive, capacity-based selection mechanism that processes all display items automatically and in parallel across the visual field until attentional resources are consumed (Lavie, 1995). According to this perceptual load hypothesis, distractor interference should occur when perceptual load is low but not when perceptual load is high. The present study investigated whether the observed identity intrusion effect was due to attentional capture or perceptual load. Experiment 1 replicated the main findings reported by Theeuwes and Burger under conditions of relatively low perceptual load. Experiment 2 provided critical evidence for the perceptual load account by showing that the identity intrusion effect occurred in the context of low perceptual load, but not high perceptual load. The present findings were therefore interpreted to support the perceptual load account of the identity intrusion effect, not the attentional capture account.

Frontal control of attentional capture in visual search

Lavie and colleagues recently suggested that cognitive control functions that are mediated by frontal cortex provide goal-directed control of selective attention, serving to minimize interference by goal-irrelevant distractors. Here we provide new evidence for this claim from an attentional capture paradigm. An event-related fMRI experiment shows that the presence (vs. absence) of an irrelevant colour singleton distractor in a visual search task was not only associated with activity in superior parietal cortex, in line with a psychological attentional capture account, but was also associated with frontal cortex activity. Moreover, behavioural interference by the singleton was negatively correlated with frontal activity, suggesting that frontal cortex is involved in control of singleton interference. Behavioural tests confirmed that singleton interference depends on availability of cognitive control to the search task: Singleton interference was significantly increased by high working memory load. These results demonstrate the important role of frontal cognitive control of attention by working memory in minimizing distraction.

Failure of the extended contingent attentional capture account in multimodal settings

Sudden changes in our environment like sound bursts or light flashes are thought to automatically attract our attention thereby affecting responses to subsequent targets, although an alternative view (the contingent attentional capture account) holds that stimuli only capture our attention when they match target features. In the current study, we examined whether an extended version of the latter view can explain exogenous cuing effects on speed and accuracy of performance to targets (uncued-cued) in multimodal settings, in which auditory and visual stimuli co-occur. To this end, we determined whether observed effects of visual and auditory cues, which were always intermixed, depend on top-down settings in “pure” blocks, in which only one target modality occurred, as compared to “mixed” blocks, in which targets were either visual or auditory. Results revealed that unimodal and crossmodal cuing effects depend on top-down settings. However, our findingswerenot in accordance with predictions derived from the extended contingent attentional capture account. Specifically, visualcues showed comparable effects for visual targets in pure and mixed blocks, but also a comparable effect for auditory targets in pure blocks, and most surprisingly, an opposite effect in mixed blocks. The latter result suggests that visual stimuli may distract attention from the auditory modality in case when the modality of the forthcoming target is unknown. The results additionally revealed that the Simon effect, the influence of correspondence or not between stimulus and response side, is modulated by exogenous cues in unimodal settings, but not in crossmodal settings. These findingsaccord with the view that attention plays an important role for the Simon effect, and additionally questions the directness of links between maps of visual and auditory space.

The masking account of attentional capture: A reply to Yantis and Jonides (1996).

The masking account of attentional capture: A reply to Yantis and Jonides (1996).

Visual motion and attentional capture.

Previous work has shown that abrupt visual onsets capture attention. This occurs even with stimuli that are equiluminant with the background, which suggests that the appearance of a new perceptual object, not merely a change in luminance, captures attention. Three experiments are reported in which this work was extended by investigating the possible role of visual motion in attentional capture. Experiment 1 revealed that motion can efficiently guide attention when it is perfectly informative about the location of a visual search target, but that it does not draw attention when it does not predict the target's position. This result was obtained with several forms of motion, including oscillation, looming, and nearby moving contours. To account for these and other results, we tested a new-object account of attentional capture in Experiment 2 by using a global/local paradigm. When motion segregated a local letter from its perceptual group, the local letter captured attention as indexed by an effect on latency of response to the task-relevant global configuration. Experiment 3 ruled out the possibility that the motion in Experiment 2 captured attention merely by increasing the salience of the moving object. We argue instead that when motion segregates a perceptual element from a perceptual group, a new perceptual object is created, and this event captures attention. Together, the results suggest that motion as such does not capture attention but that the appearance of a new perceptual object does.