Attentional Control Settings Research Articles

A neuro-computational model of visual attention with multiple attentional control sets

In numerous activities, humans need to attend to multiple sources of visual information at the same time. Although several recent studies support the evidence of this ability, the mechanism of multi-item attentional processing is still a matter of debate and has not been investigated much by previous computational models. Here, we present a neuro-computational model aiming to address specifically the question of how subjects attend to two items that deviate defined by feature and location. We simulate the experiment of Adamo et al. (2010) which required subjects to use two different attentional control sets, each a combination of color and location. The structure of our model is composed of two components “attention” and “decision-making”. The important aspect of our model is its dynamic equations that allow us to simulate the time course of processes at a neural level that occur during different stages until a decision is made. We analyze in detail the conditions under which our model matches the behavioral and EEG data from human subjects. Consistent with experimental findings, our model supports the hypothesis of attending to two control settings concurrently. In particular, our model proposes that initially, feature-based attention operates in parallel across the scene, and only in ongoing processing, a selection by the location takes place.

Visual working memory and long-term memory attentional control settings: Can we maintain both simultaneously?

Visual working memory and long-term memory attentional control settings: Can we maintain both simultaneously?

Selection history modulates the limit of visual awareness in color perception.

Among studies on the limit of conscious representation of color at a given instant, some have shown evidence of momentary awareness of only a single color, while others have not, leading to uncertainty about the factors that influence the limit. In two experiments, we explored the role of selection history, or recent experience with a trial, which is known to influence the representations of task stimuli and responses. Two color patches were briefly displayed either simultaneously or sequentially. In Experiment 1, we presented the two types of trials either in separate blocks or in interleaved couplets. In the former case, participants could deploy optimal attentional control setting in response to different types of trials with little cost by using recent experience with a preceding trial and prior knowledge. In the latter case, reconfiguring attentional control setting after each trial would be costly. In Experiment 2, we mixed the two types of trials randomly within a block during testing, but re-grouped them in data analyses such that the same type of trials was either repeated or not repeated. The results show that accuracywas comparable between the simultaneous and sequential trialsin the block condition in Experiment 1 and in the repeat condition in Experiment 2, suggesting that two colors were perceived at a time. These results indicate that selection history plays an important role in the limit of visual awareness in color perception and that the finding of single-color perception reported in previous research might not be a general phenomenon.

A finer-grained search reveals no evidence of the attentional capture by to-be-ignored features.

The contingent capture account of involuntary attention claims that it is guided by top-down factors, such as volitional goals or task instructions. The contrasting rapid disengagement account holds that the contingent capture account relies on the spatial precueing paradigm, which is vulnerable to the elimination of the cue-validity effect through rapid attentional disengagement. In the present study, five experiments were conducted to examine whether a spatial cue presented in a target-defining or distractor-defining color that predicted the location of a subsequently presented target at the chance level involuntarily captures attention by measuring the cue-validity effect. Additionally, to examine the influence of cue-target compatibility as an alternative indicator of attentional capture, an object identical to or different from the target object was presented at the cued location in the cue display in all experiments. The results showed that the cue-validity effect and the cue-target compatibility effect were present only when the target-color cue was presented. The object of the target display presented at the location cued by the target color was recognized even on invalid trials. By contrast, the distractor color cue did not show any indication of attentional capture or postattentive inhibition. These results imply that preattentive selection and postattentive inhibition depend on top-down attentional control setting. Furthermore, the absence of a cue-validity effect with a distractor feature is not due to the inhibition of the cued location after attentional disengagement.

How do competing influences of selection history interact? A commentary on Luck et al. (2021)

ABSTRACT Attention researchers have long debated the role that attentional control settings play in determining selection. In their article, Luck et al. (2021) have identified points of consensus among traditionally opposed models of attentional control, one of which is that prior experience (i.e., selection history) allows attentional control settings to suppress attention to salient distractors by inhibiting the attentional priority of learned distractor features and/or locations. However, the influence of prior experience on attentional priority is not exclusively inhibitory. In particular, experiencing the relationship between a stimulus feature and reward has been shown to increase that feature's attentional priority. Here, we discuss recent findings investigating how these competing influences of selection history interact, suggesting that experience-driven distractor suppression and reward independently modulate attentional selection.

Probability cueing induced bias does not modulate attention-capture by brief abrupt-onset cues

ABSTRACT Salient objects, such as abrupt-onsets, can capture attention even when nearly invisible. While the influence of explicit factors on such capture (e.g., task-goals) has been extensively investigated, the role of implicit control settings (e.g., probability cueing) is relatively unknown. We examined whether probability cueing affects attentional capture by masked onset cues. The target was more likely to appear on one hemifield of the display than the other. Saccade latencies indicated that capture by masked cues was identical across high and low-probability hemifields (Experiment 1). The same cues, when unmasked, captured attention more when presented in the high-probability hemifield (Experiment 2). We argue that capture by masked cues is not sensitive to implicitly learned biases, such as probability cueing. These findings support theories proposing that attentional control settings influence masked visual orienting only when set up explicitly.

A concurrent working memory load does not necessarily impair spatial attention: Evidence from inhibition of return

ABSTRACT Inhibition of return (IOR), an inhibitory aftereffect of attentional orienting, usually reveals itself in slower responses to targets appearing at previously attended locations in spatial cueing tasks. Many of the neural substrates underlying visual working memory are also closely linked to attention. The present study examined whether the contents held in working memory interfere with IOR by requiring participants to keep a set of spatial locations in working memory while they performed a spatial cueing task. Results revealed that the presence of a concurrent working memory load modulated IOR when the cueing task involved saccadic responses (Experiment 4), but not when more resource-demanding responses were required in the cueing task (Experiments 1–3). The present study also revealed that working memory load had little effect on the time course of IOR. We suggest that the attentional control setting (ACS) selected to accommodate the cognitive tasks at hand determines whether working memory will interfere with IOR and spatial attention in general.

Getting it right from the start: Attentional control settings without a history of target selection.

Observers can adopt attentional control settings that regulate how their attention is drawn to salient stimuli in the environment. Do observers choose their attentional control settings voluntarily, or are they primed in a bottom-up manner based on the stimuli that the observer has recently attended and responded to (i.e., target-selection history)? In the present experiment, we tested these two accounts using a long-term memory attentional control settings paradigm, in which participants memorized images of 18 common visual objects, and then searched for those objects in a spatial blink task. Unbeknownst to participants, we manipulated priming by dividing the set of target objects into two subsets: nine objects appeared frequently as targets in the spatial blink task (frequently primed objects), and nine infrequently (infrequently primed objects). We assessed attentional capture by presenting these objects as distractors in the spatial blink task and measuring their effect on task accuracy. We found that both subsets of objects captured attention more than non-studied objects, and frequently primed objects did not capture attention more than infrequently primed objects. Moreover, a follow-up analysis revealed that all studied objects captured attention, even before those objects had appeared as targets in the spatial blink task. These findings suggest that priming through target-selection history plays little-to-no role in long-term memory attentional control settings. Rather, these findings align with a growing body of evidence that attentional control settings are primarily implemented through voluntary control.

Goals matter: Only searched-for visual working memory representations form an attentional control set.

Goals matter: Only searched-for visual working memory representations form an attentional control set.

The role of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in attentional bias

The DLPFC is thought to be critically involved in maintaining attention away from behaviourally irrelevant information, and in the establishment of attentional control settings. These play an important role in the phenomenon of top-down bias to features in the visual field – also known as attentional bias. This paper probes the involvement of the left DLPFC in attentional bias by manipulating its cortical excitability via tDCS and then analysing these effects following an induced attentional bias towards the colour green. Although both anodal and cathodal tDCS over the left DLPFC decrease distractibility caused by biased but irrelevant objects, further interrogation of our data reveals theoretically differential mechanisms for each type of stimulation. Anodal tDCS appears to increase cognitive control over attentional bias-related items that are behaviourally irrelevant, allowing for their efficient disregard. In contrast, cathodal tDCS appears to lessen the overall effect of the induced attentional bias, potentially by reducing the influence of top-down modulated attentional control settings thus preventing the implementation of the control setting favouring green items. These results suggest a potential causal role of the left DLPFC in the cognitive mechanism underlying attentional bias.

Proactive Control of Emotional Distraction: Evidence From EEG Alpha Suppression.

Biased attention towards emotional stimuli is adaptive, as it facilitates responses to important threats and rewards. An unfortunate consequence is that emotional stimuli can become potent distractors when they are irrelevant to current goals. How can this distraction be overcome despite the bias to attend to emotional stimuli? Recent studies show that distraction by irrelevant flankers is reduced when distractor frequency is high, even if they are emotional. A parsimonious explanation is that the expectation of frequent distractors promotes the use of proactive control, whereby attentional control settings can be altered to minimize distraction before it occurs. It is difficult, however, to infer proactive control on the basis of behavioral data alone. We therefore measured neural indices of proactive control while participants performed a target-detection task in which irrelevant peripheral distractors (either emotional or neutral) could appear either frequently (on 75% of trials) or rarely (on 25% of trials). We measured alpha power during the pre-stimulus period to assess proactive control and during the post-stimulus period to determine the consequences of control for subsequent processing. Pre-stimulus alpha power was tonically suppressed in the high, compared to low, distractor frequency condition, regardless of expected distractor valence, indicating sustained use of proactive control. In contrast, post-stimulus alpha suppression was reduced in the high-frequency condition, suggesting that proactive control reduced the need for post-stimulus adjustments. Our findings indicate that a sustained proactive control strategy accounts for the reduction in both emotional and non-emotional distraction when distractors are expected to appear frequently.

Testing the top-down contingent capture of attention for abrupt-onset cues: Evidence from cue-elicited N2pc.

Many studies using N2pc as a marker of attentional capture have demonstrated top-down contingent capture for salient color singletons: Among all salient cues that are not predictive of the target location, only cues similar to searched-for target features, and thus, matching to the top-down attentional control settings capture attention. This is reflected in matching cue's elicitation of an N2pc and a cueing effect in behavior, and the absence of the corresponding effects for non-matching cues (with features dissimilar to that of the searched-for targets). Yet, with abrupt-onset cues, corresponding evidence is missing, inviting speculations about the potential of abrupt-onset cues to capture attention followed by quick suppression within the target displays. Here, we used two types of abrupt-onset cues to test if capture by such cues also adheres to the contingent-capture principle: matching abrupt-onset cues with a color similar to the top-down control settings and non-matching abrupt-onset cues with a color different from all searched-for targets. With the help of these cues, top-down contingent capture was supported. Only matching abrupt-onset cues elicited an N2pc and a behavioral cueing effect. Depending on the exact side conditions, non-matching cues either elicited no N2pc or a PD (i.e., evidence of active suppression). Results are discussed against the background of competing theories on attention capture by abrupt-onset cues.

To look or not to look: Subliminal abruptonset cues influence constrained free-choice saccades.

Subliminal cues have been shown to capture attention and modulate manual response behaviour but their impact on eye movement behaviour is not well-studied. In two experiments, we examined if subliminal cues influence constrained free-choice saccades and if this influence is under strategic control as a function of task-relevancy of the cues. On each trial, a display containing four filled circles at the centre of each quadrant was shown. A central coloured circle indicated the relevant visual field on each trial (Up or Down in Experiment 1; Left or Right in Experiment 2). Next, abrupt-onset cues were presented for 16 ms at one of the four locations. Participants were then asked to freely choose and make a saccade to one of the two target circles in the relevant visual field. The analysis of the frequency of saccades, saccade endpoint deviation and saccade latency revealed a significant influence of the relevant subliminal cues on saccadic decisions. Latency data showed reduced capture by spatiallyirrelevant cues under some conditions. These results indicate that spatial attentional control settings as defined in our study could modulate the influence of subliminal abrupt-onset cues on eye movement behaviour. We situate the findings of this study in the attention-capture debate and discuss the implications for the subliminal cueing literature.

Ensemble perception without attention depends upon attentional control settings.

People are able to rapidly extract summary statistical information about common patterns, or ensembles, that may exist in a scene, such as repeated textures or colors. Here we examined the extent to which such an ensemble perception can occur in the absence of focal visual attention using a method that has some advantages over methods previously used to study the issue. In particular, we assessed the extent to which ensembles can be processed without attention by measuring the indirect effect of a to-be-ignored ensemble on judgments of an attended ensemble. The results show that ensembles outside the focus of attention do influence judgments of attended ensembles when the to-be-ignored ensemble contains summary statistics that match a sought-for target category. Thus, an attentional control setting for specific summary statistical information permits the processing of ensembles outside of focal attention, facilitating the rapid perception of visual scenes.

Non-spatial context-driven search.

Contexts that predict characteristics of search targets can guide attention by triggering attentional control settings for the characteristics. However, this context-driven search has most commonly been found in the spatial dimension. The present study explored the context-driven search when shape contexts predict the color of targets: non-spatial context-driven search. It has been demonstrated that context-driven search requires cognitive resources, and evidence of non-spatial context-driven search is found when there is an increase in cognitive resources for the shape/color associations. Thus, the scarcity of evidence for non-spatial context-driven search is potentially because the context-driven search requires more cognitive resources for shape/color associations than for spatial/spatial associations. In the current study, we violated a previously 100% consistent shape/color association with two mismatch trials to encourage allocation of cognitive resources to the shape/color association. Three experiments showed that the shape-predicted color cues captured attention more than the non-predicted color cues, indicating that shape contexts triggered attentional control settings for a color predicted by the contexts. Furthermore, the shape contexts guided attention to the predicted color only after the two mismatch trials, suggesting that expression of the non-spatial context-driven search may require cognitive resources more than the spatial context-driven search.

No role for activated long-term memory in attentional control settings.

Visual spatial attentional capture is contingent on an observer's goals, or attentional control settings. Recent research has demonstrated that observers can adopt attentional control settings based on numerous visual objects represented in episodic long-term memory (LTM). But why do LTM representations that comprise an attentional control set bias attentional capture, when other LTM representations do not? In the present study, we tested the activated LTM account-that LTM representations form an attentional control set if, and only if, they are represented in activated LTM-by mixing a working memory task to test for representation in activated LTM, with a spatial blink task to test for the state of participants' attentional control settings. In Experiments 1 and 2, inducing participants to represent complex visual objects in activated LTM did not result in those objects forming an attentional control set. In Experiment 3, we found a dissociation between activated LTM and attentional control settings; objects that were represented in activated LTM produced greater intrusion effects (indicating representation in activated LTM) than objects that were part of an attentional control set, yet smaller capture effects. These results do not support the activated LTM account. We conclude that representation in activated LTM is not the factor that determines which LTM representations comprise an attentional control set, and discuss the implications of these findings for research on attentional templates and hybrid visual and memory search. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Category-based attentional capture can be influenced by color- and shape-dimensions independently in the conjunction search task.

Attention can be involuntarily attracted by a distractor that matches the current attentional control settings (ACSs). However, it remains unclear whether two category-specific ACSs can operate independently. By defining a target as a combination of two prototype-based categories, the present event-related potential (ERP) study investigated how color-category and shape-category ACSs operate within a search task paradigm and the effects of temporal task demands on these ACSs. The matching level between target and distractor was manipulated to separate the effects of each ACS. The relative position between target and distractor was employed to isolate the attentional processing of the distractor from the target. Furthermore, two display durations were used to manipulate the temporal task demands, including a short fixed window (800ms) and a dynamic window extended until the user responded. Our results support a two-stage selection scenario. In early stage, the color- and shape-ACS independently guided attention to task-relevant property (N2pc components) and suppressed attention toward task-irrelevant properties (PD components). In late stage, these two independent ACSs were integrated into a holistic ACS to interfere with the consolidation (contralateral delay activity components) and behavioral performance (accuracy and RTs) of target identification. Moreover, an early N1/P1 component might reflect a preattentive enhancement of relevant information or a preattentive suppression of irrelevant objects. These two category-specific ACSs weights differently in varied temporal task demands. These findings support the idea that independent early processing is followed by integrated late processing, which can be applied to category-based attentional capture with different temporal task demands.

Which search are you on? Adapting to color while searching for shape.

Human observers adjust their attentional control settings when searching for a target in the presence of predictable changes in the target-defining feature dimension. We investigated whether observers also adapt to changes in a nondefining target dimension. According to feature integration theory, stimuli that are unique in their environment in a single feature dimension can be detected with little effort. In two experiments, we studied how observers searching for such singletons adapt their attentional control settings to a dynamical change in a nondefining target dimension. Participants searched for a shape singleton and freely chose between two targets in each trial. The two targets differed in color, and the ratio of distractors colored like each target varied dynamically across trials. A model-based analysis with a Bayesian estimation approach showed that participants adapted their target choices to the color ratio: They tended to select the target from the smaller color subset, and switched their preference both when the color ratio changed between gray and heterogeneous colors (Exp. 1) and when it changed between red and blue (Exp. 2). Participants thus tuned their attentional control settings toward color, although the target was defined by shape. We concluded that observers spontaneously adapted their behavior to changing regularities in the environment. Because adaptation was more pronounced when color homogeneity allowed for element grouping, we suggest that observers adapt to regularities that can be registered without attentional resources. They do so even if the changes are not relevant for accomplishing the task-a process presumably based on statistical learning.

Proactive control of affective distraction: Experience-based but not expectancy-based

Unpleasant stimuli disrupt ongoing information processing, even when they are entirely task-irrelevant. We examined whether such affective disturbances can be controlled explicitly and proactively. Specifically, we studied two different mechanisms to induce proactive control: the experience of frequent affective distraction and cueing of upcoming affective distraction. We predicted that both mechanisms would shield the attentional system from affective disturbance. Participants solved a letter classification task while being exposed to neutral or negative distractor pictures. We varied whether the proportion of negative distractors was low or high and whether cues for the upcoming type of distractor valence were informative or uninformative. In three experiments (N = 114), we found support for the notion that experience-based control shields information processing from affective disturbances, whereas distractor valence expectations were not helpful. These data suggest that there is no explicit top-down influence on attentional control settings of affective distraction, just adjustments to the context.

Smile and the world watches: Capture by happy gaze cues outside an attentional control set.

Smile and the world watches: Capture by happy gaze cues outside an attentional control set.