Attentional Control Settings Research Articles

Attentional control settings are stored in activated long term memory

Attentional control settings are stored in activated long term memory

Attentional control settings established via statistical learning are changed by context

Attentional control settings established via statistical learning are changed by context

A trade-off between performance and effort in the choice of attentional control settings

A trade-off between performance and effort in the choice of attentional control settings

The different roles of category- and feature-specific attentional control settings on attentional enhancement and inhibition.

Contingent attentional capture suggests that top-down attentional control settings (ACS) can enhance attentional processing of task-relevant properties and inhibit attentional processing of task-irrelevant properties. However, it remains unclear how ACS operates when a distractor has both task-relevant and task-irrelevant characteristics. In the present study, two lateralized ERP components, N2pc and distractor positivity (Pd), were employed as markers of attentional enhancement and inhibition, respectively. The degree of matching between a distractor and a conjunctively defined target was manipulated to illustrate attentional guidance by category-specific ACS (cACS) and feature-specific ACS (fACS), and the relative position between the distractor and the target was manipulated to isolate the processing of the distractor and the target. Experiment 1 showed that, with a long display duration for searching, a reliable N2pc component was elicited by a distractor that was feature-matched but category-mismatched (C-F+) relative to the target-defined properties, suggesting an enhancing effect of fACS. In contrast, Experiment 2 demonstrated that, with a short display duration, a Pd component was elicited by a distractor that was feature-mismatched but category-matched (C+F-) relative to the target-defined properties, suggesting an inhibitory effect of fACS. Moreover, both attentional enhancement and inhibition were only triggered by fACS but not by cACS. In summary, ACS can enhance target-relevant properties or inhibit target-irrelevant properties in response to the display duration, and fACS affects both enhancement and inhibition more than cACS.

Crossmodal attentional control sets between vision and audition

The interplay between top-down and bottom-up factors in attentional selection has been a topic of extensive research and controversy amongst scientists over the past two decades. According to the influential contingent capture hypothesis, a visual stimulus needs to match the feature(s) implemented into the current attentional control sets in order to be automatically selected. Recently, however, evidence has been presented that attentional control sets affect not only visual but also crossmodal selection. The aim of the present study was therefore to establish contingent capture as a general principle of multisensory selection. A non-spatial interference task with bimodal (visual and auditory) distractors and bimodal targets was used. The target and the distractors were presented in close temporal succession. In order to perform the task correctly, the participants only had to process a predefined target feature in either of the two modalities (e.g., colour when vision was the primary modality). Note that the additional crossmodal stimulation (e.g., a specific sound when hearing was the secondary modality) was not relevant for the selection of the correct response. Nevertheless, larger interference effects were observed when the distractor matched both the stimulus of the primary as well as the secondary modality and this pattern was even stronger if vision was the primary modality than if audition was the primary modality. These results are therefore in line with the crossmodal contingent capture hypothesis. Both visual and auditory early processing seem to be affected by top-down control sets even beyond the spatial dimension.

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

For more than 2 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 this study, we used eye-tracking 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.

Can attentional control settings explain differences in attentional bias to threat in anxious and non-anxious individuals?

Can attentional control settings explain differences in attentional bias to threat in anxious and non-anxious individuals?

Limits on the contribution of priming to attentional control settings: Evidence from long-term memory control sets.

Limits on the contribution of priming to attentional control settings: Evidence from long-term memory control sets.

Pupil dilation indexes effort exertion during the configuration of attentional control setting

Pupil dilation indexes effort exertion during the configuration of attentional control setting

Context-specific attentional sampling: Intentional control as a pre-requisite for contextual control.

Recent work suggests that environmental cues associated with previous attentional control settings can rapidly and involuntarily adjust attentional priorities. The current study tests predictions from adaptive-learning and memory-based theories of contextual control about the role of intentions for setting attentional priorities. To extend the empirical boundaries of contextual control phenomena, and to determine whether theoretical principles of contextual control are generalizable we used a novel bi-dimensional stimulus sampling task. Subjects viewed briefly presented arrays of letters and colors presented above or below fixation, and identified specific stimuli according to a dimensional (letter or color) and positional cue. Location was predictive of the cued dimension, but not the position or identity. In contrast to previous findings, contextual control failed to develop through automatic, adaptive-learning processes. Instead, previous experience with intentionally changing attentional sampling priorities between different contexts was required for contextual control to develop.

An effective attentional set for a specific colour does not prevent capture by infrequently presented motion distractors.

An organism's survival depends on the ability to rapidly orient attention to unanticipated events in the world. Yet, the conditions needed to elicit such involuntary capture remain in doubt. Especially puzzling are spatial cueing experiments, which have consistently shown that involuntary shifts of attention to highly salient distractors are not determined by stimulus properties, but instead are contingent on attentional control settings induced by task demands. Do we always need to be set for an event to be captured by it, or is there a class of events that draw attention involuntarily even when unconnected to task goals? Recent results suggest that a task-irrelevant event will capture attention on first presentation, suggesting that salient stimuli that violate contextual expectations might automatically capture attention. Here, we investigated the role of contextual expectation by examining whether an irrelevant motion cue that was presented only rarely (∼3-6% of trials) would capture attention when observers had an active set for a specific target colour. The motion cue had no effect when presented frequently, but when rare produced a pattern of interference consistent with attentional capture. The critical dependence on the frequency with which the irrelevant motion singleton was presented is consistent with early theories of involuntary orienting to novel stimuli. We suggest that attention will be captured by salient stimuli that violate expectations, whereas top-down goals appear to modulate capture by stimuli that broadly conform to contextual expectations.

Choosing attentional control settings in a dynamically changing environment.

Goal-directed attentional control supports efficient visual search by prioritizing relevant stimuli in the environment. Previous research has shown that goal-directed control can be configured in many ways, and often multiple control settings can be used to achieve the same goal. However, little is known about how control settings are selected. We explored the extent to which the configuration of goal-directed control is driven by performance maximization (optimally configuring settings to maximize speed and accuracy) and effort minimization (selecting the least effortful settings). We used a new paradigm, adaptive choice visual search, which allows participants to choose one of two available targets (a red or a blue square) on each trial. Distractor colors vary predictively across trials, such that the optimal target switches back and forth throughout the experiment. Results (N = 43) show that participants chose the optimal target most often, updating to the new target when the environment changed, supporting performance maximization. However, individuals were sluggish to update to the optimal color, consistent with effort minimization. Additionally, we found a surprisingly high rate of nonoptimal choices and switching between targets, which could not be explained by either factor. Analysis of participants' self-reported search strategy revealed substantial individual differences in the control strategies used. In sum, the adaptive choice visual search enables a fresh approach to studying goal-directed control. The results contribute new evidence that control is partly determined by both performance maximization and effort minimization, as well as at least one additional factor, which we speculate to include novelty seeking.

Feature- and category-specific attentional control settings are differently affected by attentional engagement in contingent attentional capture

A distractor can capture attention and impair target processing when it shares a target-defining property and matches specific attentional control settings (ACS). We studied how feature-specific ACS (fACS) and category-specific ACS (cACS) operate in a conjunction search task and how they are influenced by attentional engagement. The feature- and category-matching level and temporal lags between the distractor and target were manipulated in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task. The N2pc component and impairment of target identification, which are associated with attentional allocation at an earlier stage and response selection at a later stage, respectively, were measured as markers of attentional capture. The interaction of two ACSs was observed in behavioral data, but disappeared in N2pc data, suggesting two-stage processing of multiple ACSs during a conjunction search, including an early independent and a late integrated stage. Moreover, a reliable N2pc was observed for fACS regardless of the sufficiency of attentional engagement, whereas the N2pc for cACS was only observed with sufficient attentional engagement, but disappeared when the attentional engagement was insufficient. This suggests that cACS demands sufficient attentional engagement, while fACS does not. In conclusion, fACS and cACS can be activated independently at an earlier stage, but they are integrated at a later stage during a conjunction search task and are differently influenced by attentional engagement.

Object-based selection is contingent on attentional control settings.

The visual system allocates attention in object-based and location-based modes. However, the question of when attention selects objects and when it selects locations remains poorly understood. In this article, we present variations on two classic paradigms from the object-based attention literature, in which object-based effects are observed only when the object feature matches the task goal of the observer. In Experiment 1, covert orienting was influenced by task-irrelevant rectangles, but only when the target color matched the rectangle color. In Experiment 2, the region of attentional focus was adjusted to the size of task-irrelevant objects, but only when the target color matched the object color. In Experiment 3, we ruled out the possibility that contingent object-based selection is caused by color-based intratrial priming. These demonstrations of contingent object-based attention suggest that object-based selection is neither mandatory nor default, and that object-based effects are contingent on simple, top-down attentional control settings.

Activation of context-specific attentional control sets by exogenous allocation of visual attention to the context?

Different contexts with high versus low conflict frequencies require a specific attentional control involvement, i.e., strong attentional control for high conflict contexts and less attentional control for low conflict contexts. While it is assumed that the corresponding control set can be activated upon stimulus presentation at the respective context (e.g., upper versus lower location), the actual features that trigger control set activation are to date not described. Here, we ask whether the perceptual priming of the location context by an abrupt onset of irrelevant stimuli is sufficient in activating the context-specific attentional control set. For example, the mere onset of a stimulus might disambiguate the relevant location context and thus, serve as a low-level perceptual trigger mechanism that activates the context-specific attentional control set. In Experiment 1 and 2, the onsets of task-relevant and task-irrelevant (distracter) stimuli were manipulated at each context location to compete for triggering the activation of the appropriate control set. In Experiment 3, a prior training session enabled distracter stimuli to establish contextual control associations of their own before entering the test session. Results consistently showed that the mere onset of a task-irrelevant stimulus (with or without a context-control association) is not sufficient to activate the context-associated attentional control set by disambiguating the relevant context location. Instead, we argue that the identification of the relevant stimulus at the respective context is a precondition to trigger the activation of the context-associated attentional control set.

Attentional capture by items that match episodic long-term memory representations

ABSTRACTA remarkable ability of the human visual system is the implementation of attentional control settings (ACSs) that govern what stimuli capture or hold attention. We provide evidence that ACSs can be specified by episodic long-term memory representations. In all experiments, participants memorized 30 images of objects that they then monitored for in an attention task, inducing an episodic-based ACS. In Experiments 1a and 1b, only studied cues in a cueing task captured attention. We confirmed these cueing effects reflect capture by testing for inhibition of return in Experiment 2a, and controlled for perceptual masking by cues in Experiment 2b. In Experiment 3 we determined that ACSs are specifically supported by episodic retrieval, by dividing studied images into two sets and designating one as the targets in a rapid serial visual presentation task: Only target-set matching distractors produced a spatial blink (captured attention). These results extend our understanding of the representations specifying ACSs.

Altering attentional control settings causes persistent biases of visual attention.

Attentional control settings have an important role in guiding visual behaviour. Previous work within cognitive psychology has found that the deployment of general attentional control settings can be modulated by training. However, research has not yet established whether long-term modifications of one particular type of attentional control setting can be induced. To address this, we investigated persistent alterations to feature search mode, also known as an attentional bias, towards an arbitrary stimulus in healthy participants. Subjects were biased towards the colour green by an information sheet. Attentional bias was assessed using a change detection task. After an interval of either 1 or 2 weeks, participants were then retested on the same change detection task, tested on a different change detection task where colour was irrelevant, or were biased towards an alternative colour. One experiment included trials in which the distractor stimuli (but never the target stimuli) were green. The key finding was that green stimuli in the second task attracted attention, despite this impairing task performance. Furthermore, inducing a second attentional bias did not override the initial bias toward green objects. The attentional bias also persisted for at least two weeks. It is argued that this persistent attentional bias is mediated by a chronic change to participants' attentional control settings, which is aided by long-term representations involving contextual cueing. We speculate that similar changes to attentional control settings and continuous cueing may relate to attentional biases observed in psychopathologies. Targeting these biases may be a productive approach to treatment.

The effects of attentional control setting and types of cues on attentional capture

The effects of attentional control setting and types of cues on attentional capture

All set, indeed! N2pc components reveal simultaneous attentional control settings for multiple target colors.

To study whether top-down attentional control processes can be set simultaneously for different visual features, we employed a spatial cueing procedure to measure behavioral and electrophysiological markers of task-set contingent attentional capture during search for targets defined by 1 or 2 possible colors (one-color and two-color tasks). Search arrays were preceded by spatially nonpredictive color singleton cues. Behavioral spatial cueing effects indicative of attentional capture were elicited only by target-matching but not by distractor-color cues. However, when search displays contained 1 target-color and 1 distractor-color object among gray nontargets, N2pc components were triggered not only by target-color but also by distractor-color cues both in the one-color and two-color task, demonstrating that task-set nonmatching items attracted attention. When search displays contained 6 items in 6 different colors, so that participants had to adopt a fully feature-specific task set, the N2pc to distractor-color cues was eliminated in both tasks, indicating that nonmatching items were now successfully excluded from attentional processing. These results demonstrate that when observers adopt a feature-specific search mode, attentional task sets can be configured flexibly for multiple features within the same dimension, resulting in the rapid allocation of attention to task-set matching objects only. (PsycINFO Database Record

Learned states of preparatory attentional control.

Individuals regularly experience fluctuations in the ability to perform cognitive operations. Although previous research has focused on predicting cognitive flexibility from persistent individual traits, as well as from spontaneous fluctuations in neural activity, the role of learning in shaping preparatory attentional control remains poorly understood. Across 3 experiments, we manipulated the statistical regularities of an attentional orienting paradigm to examine whether individuals modulated attentional flexibility, the readiness to perform a spatial shift of attention, across learned contexts. We found evidence of learning-based modulations in preparatory attentional control settings when the probability of shifting the focus of attention differed based on temporally or color-defined contexts. Furthermore, in the case of color-defined contexts, these modulations in preparatory control persisted even after a change in the underlying statistical properties. Our results indicate that dynamic adjustments in preparatory attentional control are sensitive to the underlying statistical regularities of an environment. This finding has implications for understanding disordered patterns of attentional control and how these patterns might be modified with training.