Attentional Capture Research Articles

Learning to suppress what I fear.

Objects that typically induce fear capture attention in an automatic, involuntary manner, particularly for individuals fearful of such objects. This study investigates whether attention to these objects can be attenuated through statistical learning. Participants searched for shapes while occasionally being distracted by images of leaves, which appeared with a higher probability at a particular location, resulting in learned spatial suppression (collected in 2024). Subsequently, distractors also included butterfly and spider images. Counter to a control group, individuals with high fear of spiders exhibited heightened attentional capture by spiders compared to neutral distractors. Critically, at high-probability distractor locations, fearful individuals managed to suppress spider images, resulting in reduced interference. This suggests that attention to fear-inducing stimuli can be modulated through learning processes, offering potential for novel training methods to alleviate biases toward threatening stimuli. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Salience effects on attentional selection are enabled by task relevance.

Attention is a limited resource that must be carefully controlled to prevent distraction. Much research has demonstrated that distraction can be prevented by proactively suppressing salient stimuli to prevent them from capturing attention. It has been suggested, however, that prior studies showing evidence of suppression may have used stimuli that were not truly salient. This claim has been difficult to test because there are currently no agreed-upon methods to demonstrate that an object is salient. The current study aims to help resolve this by introducing a new technique to test the role of salience in attentional capture. Low- and high-salience singletons were generated via a manipulation of color contrast. An initial experiment then verified the manipulation of salience using a search task where the color singleton was the target and could only be found via its bottom-up popout. High-salience singletons were found much more easily than low-salience singletons, suggesting that salience powerfully influenced attention when task relevant. A following experiment then used the same stimulus displays but adapted the task so that the singletons were task-irrelevant distractors. Both low- and high-salience singletons were suppressed, suggesting neither was able to capture attention. These results challenge purely stimulus-driven accounts by showing that improving salience only enhances attentional allocation in situations where the object is also task relevant. The results are instead consistent with the signal suppression hypothesis, which predicts that task-irrelevant singletons can be suppressed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A Possible Neural Basis for Attentional Capture of Faces Revealed by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Causal Pharmacological Inactivation in Macaques

Abstract In primates, the presence of a face in a visual scene captures attention and rapidly directs the observer's gaze to the face, even when the face is not relevant to the task at hand. Here, we explored a neural circuit that might potentially play a causal role in this powerful behavior. In our previous research, two monkeys received microinfusions of muscimol, a γ-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA)-receptor agonist, or saline (as a control condition) in separate sessions into individual or pairs of four inferotemporal face patches (middle and anterior lateral and fundal), as identified by an initial localizer experiment. Then, using fMRI, we measured the impact of each inactivation condition on responses in the other face patches relative to the control condition. In this study, we used the same method and measured the impact of each inactivation condition on responses in the FEF and the lateral intraparietal area, two regions associated with attentional processing, while face and nonface object stimuli were viewed. Our results revealed potential relationships between inferotemporal face patches and these two attention-related regions: The inactivation of the middle lateral and anterior fundal face patches had a pronounced impact on FEF, whereas the inactivation of the middle and anterior lateral face patches had a noticeable influence on LIP. Together, these initial exploratory findings document a circuit that potentially underlies the attentional capture of faces. Confirmation of the role of this circuit remains to be accomplished in the context of a paradigm that explicitly tests the attentional capture of faces.

From faces to fingers: Examining attentional capture of faces and body parts using colour singleton paradigm.

Faces and body parts play a crucial role in human social communication. Numerous studies emphasize their significance as sociobiological stimuli in daily interactions. Two experiments were conducted to examine the following: (a) whether faces or body parts are processed more quickly than other visual objects when relevant to the task and serving as targets, and (b) the effects of presenting faces or body parts as distractors on task reaction times and error rates. The first experiment focused on either faces or body parts, with five different visual objects. The second experiment examined effector body parts (e.g., hands) and core body parts (e.g., the torso), paired with the same visual objects. Thirty-six participants took part in the study, equally divided between Experiment 1 (N = 18) and Experiment 2 (N = 18). Participants were instructed to find if a target item, indicated by a green placeholder, matched a previously presented word cue, while they were instructed to keep ignoring the singleton object that was surrounded by the red placeholder. The results indicated that participants responded more quickly when finding faces but not body parts in Experiment 1. No such advantage was seen in Experiment 2 for either effector or core body parts compared to other objects. Interestingly, when faces were presented as distractors as a singleton, reaction times increased (Experiment 1), indicating that faces capture attention. This effect was not observed for effector or core body parts (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that faces capture attention more effectively than body parts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Attributing Responsibility to Big Tech for Mass Atrocity: Social Media and Transitional Justice

Big Tech companies such as Meta, the owner of Facebook, are increasingly accused of enabling human rights violations. The proliferation of toxic speech in their digital platforms has been in the background of recent episodes of mass atrocity, the most salient of which recently transpired in Myanmar and Ethiopia. The involvement of Big Tech companies in mass atrocity raises multiple normative and conceptual challenges. One is to properly conceptualize Meta’s responsibility for the circulation of toxic speech. On one view, endorsed by the corporation itself, Meta can be absolved from any significant share of responsibility for these atrocities because toxic speech is the speech of some (rogue) users, hosted but neither created nor endorsed by the company; if anything, Meta is responsible for failing to anticipate and swiftly remove that speech. I will argue that this view is misleading, as it misses the underlying forces crafting toxic speech. Meta’s business model relies on what one might call the algorithmic capture of attention, which it achieves by manipulating its users and by creating an environment in which manipulative practices of some users thrive over others. This fact alone turns the company into a co-creator of toxic speech rather than a mere conduit of the toxic speech of others. As a result, it is safe to claim that Meta bears significant causal responsibility and sufficient moral responsibility for the dissemination of toxic speech, such that it justifies its inclusion in transitional justice processes and grounds its moral obligation to act in ways that advance these processes.

Susceptibility to Attentional Capture by Target-Matching Distractors Predicts High Visual Working Memory Capacity

Recent event-related potential (ERP) studies showed that individuals with low visual working memory (VWM) capacity are more susceptible to salience-driven attentional capture than high-capacity individuals are, with the latter being able to proactively suppress salient but irrelevant distractors. However, it remains unclear whether and how contingent attentional capture by distractors that possess a task-relevant (target) feature is related to VWM capacity. Here, we adopted a central focused-attention task that contained peripheral target-matching distractors to investigate this issue (N = 51 adults). Surprisingly, we revealed that target-matching distractors elicited both a larger N2-posterior-contralateral (N2pc) and a larger post-N2pc distractor positivity (PD) component in high-capacity individuals than in low-capacity ones, meaning that high-capacity individuals are less able to ignore such distractors initially, though they could call on a stronger reactive suppression mechanism afterward. These findings illustrate that high-capacity individuals are more (rather than less or equally) susceptible to contingent attention capture compared with low-capacity ones.

Active maintenance of working memory contents affects functioning of attentional filtering.

Salient objects are well known to capture attention. Furthermore, a stimulus associated with the attention-capturing objects could infiltrate into working memory. This was recently formulated as filter disruption theory. In the present study, we asked whether such disruption of filter and incidental encoding of irrelevant information into working memory could be prevented. We hypothesized that an active maintenance of information could activate top-down control, thereby preventing the incidental infiltration of irrelevant information into working memory. In experiments, participants performed two consecutive visual searches while maintaining a visual item in working memory. In the first search, one of nontarget items was associated with a salient distractor. Importantly, the color of the nontarget item related to the salient distractor was incidentally encoded into working memory, exerting memory-driven attentional capture in the second search. However, such incidental encoding of irrelevant information into working memory did not occur when participants had to maintain a single color in working memory. This provides novel evidence that while the attentional filter is subject to perceptual distraction, active maintenance of information in working memory can prevent such disruption of the filter.

Individual refresh ability modulates irrelevant speech effect in reading: Evidence from eye movements

This study randomly recruited 245 college students aged between 18 and 21 years old who had never studied Spanish and selected 60 subjects (30 with high refresh ability and 30 with low refresh ability) based on their scores on a refresh ability test. The mixed experimental design of 2 (refresh ability: high, low) ×3 (background sound: meaningful, meaningless, silent) was adopted. The Eyelink1000 eye tracker was used to record the eye movement data of the subjects when reading the sentences of scientific papers. At the same time, meaningful (news broadcasting) or meaningless (Spanish) background sounds are played. Based on this, the moderating effect of individual refresh ability with the impact of irrelevant speech was investigated. According to the results, the interaction between refresh ability and the meaningful background sound condition was significant, and it had an impact on the totalreading time, gaze count, regression count, total fixation time, and regression-path duration. However, the interaction with the meaningless background sound condition was not significant. The results showed that: (1) refresh ability significantly regulates the irrelevant speech effect in reading, compared with individuals with high refresh ability. The meaningful background sounds have a greater negative impact on the reading of individuals with low refresh ability; (2) the regulating effect of refresh ability occurs in the late stage of vocabulary processing and semantic integration. The results supported the attentional capture theory and found that the irrelevant speech effect in Chinese reading is modulated by individual refresh ability, which mainly acts on semantic components in late reading processing.

Attentional Capture and Control.

The current review presents an integrated tripartite framework for understanding attentional control, emphasizing the interaction and competition among top-down, bottom-up, and selection-history influences. It focuses on attentional capture, which refers to conditions in which salient objects or events receive attentional priority even when they are inconsistent with the goals, tasks, and intentions of the observer. The review describes which components of the tripartite framework are in play when distraction by salient objects is prevented and the conditions in which there is no control over the occurrence of attentional capture. It then concludes that attentional capture can be controlled in a proactive way mainly by implicit statistical learning mechanisms associated with selection history. Current and lingering controversies regarding the control of attentional capture are also discussed.

Effect of negative emotional stimuli on working memory: Impact of voluntary and automatic attention.

Emotions are known to influence cognitive performance, particularly working memory (WM) in both its aspects, processing, and maintenance. One explanatory mechanism might be that negative stimuli capture attentional resources, leaving fewer resources for attentional maintenance and processing of information in WM. However, this attentional capture was only investigated using WM tasks in which participants were explicitly asked to process negative items. The aim of this paper was to determine whether explicit processing of emotional stimuli is necessary to impair WM performance, or if their mere presence is enough to capture attention. For this purpose, participants performed a complex span task in which they alternated between memorizing a series of neutral words and processing either emotional images or neutral ones. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed to explicitly process emotional images, whereas in Experiment 2, emotional images were presented without any processing being required. In both experiments, we observed a decrease in memory performance when the images were negative compared to neutral. Whether or not voluntary processing is involved, emotional images seem to capture attentional resources, which in turn leads to a decline in memory performance. These results were discussed in relation to attentional theories and the influence of emotion on the specific mechanisms of WM.

Emojis and affective priming in visual word recognition

ABSTRACT Emojis are frequently used in digital communication to supplement the lack of non-verbal cues, but their integration during reading has not been thoroughly examined. This study explores the interplay between language and emotion by testing the influence of emotional valence and face-status of emojis on visual word recognition. Two online experiments were conducted with 92 native English-speaking university students, examining priming effects between congruent (e.g. delicious) and incongruent (e.g. hate) prime-target pairs, varying the face-status of the emoji prime (face vs. non-face) and the valence (positive vs. negative) of the word target. Irrespective of valence, face emojis demonstrated a processing advantage over non-face emojis, implying automatic attention capture. Additionally, the results revealed an interaction between prime-target congruency and valence, with a facilitatory effect for positive, but not negative, items, suggesting a valence-specific mechanism of affective priming in the lexical decision task. The research suggests that the rapid integration of emoji content occurs during the early stages of visual word recognition, with heightened attentional sensitivity to both face-like and positive stimuli when reading digital communications.

Distraction by unexpected sounds: comparing response repetition and response switching.

Numerous studies using oddball tasks have shown that unexpected sounds presented in a predictable or repeated sequence (deviant vs. standard sounds) capture attention and negatively impact ongoing behavioral performance. Here, we examine an aspect of this effect that has gone relatively unnoticed: the impact of deviant sounds is stronger for response repetitions than for response switches. Our approach was two-fold. First, we carried out a simulation to estimate the likelihood that stimuli sequences used in past work may not have used balanced proportions of response repetition and switch trials. More specifically, we sought to determine whether the larger distraction effect for response repetitions may have reflected a rarer, and thereby more surprising, occurrence of such trials. To do so, we simulated 10,000 stimuli sets for a 2-AFC task with a proportion of deviant trial of 0.1 or 0.16. Second, we carried out a 2-AFC oddball task in which participants judged the duration of a tone (short vs. long). We carefully controlled the sequence of stimuli to ensure to balance the proportions of response repetitions and response switches across the standard and deviant conditions. The results of the stimuli simulation showed that, contrary to our concerns, response switches were more likely than response repetitions when left uncontrolled for. This suggests that the larger distraction found for response repetition in past work may in fact have been underestimated. In the tone duration judgment task, the results showed a large impact of the response type on distraction as measured by response times: Deviants sounds significantly delayed response repetitions but notably accelerated switches. These findings suggest that deviant sound hinder response repetition and encourage or bias the cognitive system towards a change of responses. We discuss these findings in relation to the adaptive nature of the involuntary detection of unexpected stimuli and in relation to the notion of partial repetition costs. We argue that results are in line with the binding account as well as with the signaling theory.

Learning to ignore visual onset distractors hinges on a configuration-dependent coordinates system.

Decrement of attentional capture elicited by visual onset distractors, consistent with habituation, has been extensively characterized over the past several years. However, the type of spatial frame of reference according to which such decrement occurs in the brain remains unknown. Here, four related experiments are reported to shed light on this issue. Observers were asked to discriminate the orientation of a titled line while ignoring a salient but task-irrelevant visual onset that occurred on some trials. The experiments all involved an initial habituation phase, during which capture elicited by the onset distractor progressively decreased, as in prior studies. Importantly, in all experiments, the location of the target and the distractor remained fixed during this phase. After habituation was established, in a final test phase of the various experiments, the spatial arrangement of the target and the distractor was changed to test for the relative contribution to habituation of retinotopic, spatiotopic, and configuration-dependent visual representations. Experiment 1 indicated that spatiotopic representations contribute little, if at all, to the observed decrement in attentional capture. The results from Experiment 2 were compatible with the notion that such capture reduction occurs in either retinotopic- or configuration-specific representations. However, Experiment 3 ruled out the contribution of retinotopic representations, leaving configuration-specific representation as the sole viable interpretation. This conclusion was confirmed by the results of Experiments 4 and 5. In conclusion, visual onset distractors appear to be rejected at a level of the visual hierarchy where visual events are encoded in a configuration-specific or context-dependent manner. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Dynamics of Saccade Trajectory Modulation by Distractors: Neural Activity Patterns in the Frontal Eye Field.

The sudden appearance of a visual distractor shortly before saccade initiation can capture spatial attention and modulate the saccade trajectory in spite of the ongoing execution of the initial plan to shift gaze straight to the saccade target. To elucidate the neural correlates underlying these curved saccades, we recorded from single neurons in the frontal eye field (FEF) of two male rhesus monkeys shifting gaze to a target while a distractor with the same eccentricity appeared either left or right of the target at various delays after target presentation. We found that the population level of pre-saccadic activity of neurons representing the distractor location encoded the direction of the saccade trajectory. Stronger activity occurred when saccades curved toward the distractor, and weaker when saccades curved away. This relationship held whether the distractor was ipsilateral or contralateral to the recorded neurons. Meanwhile, visually responsive neurons showed asymmetrical patterns of excitatory responses that varied with the location of the distractor and the duration of distractor processing relating to attentional capture and distractor inhibition. During earlier distractor processing, neurons encoded curvature towards the distractor. During later distractor processing, neurons encoded curvature away from the distractor. This was observed when saccades curved away from distractors contralateral to the recording site and when saccades curved towards distractors ipsilateral to the recording site. These findings indicate that saccadic motor planning involves dynamic push-pull hemispheric interactions producing attraction or repulsion for potential but unselected saccade targets.Significant Statement This study not only advances our understanding of oculomotor function in dynamic environments but also has potential clinical relevance for diagnosing and understanding disorders characterized by abnormal saccade trajectories. Our research elucidates the neural mechanisms behind saccade trajectories that are not always linear due to the brain's integration of multiple visual cues and/or motor plans. By analyzing the frontal eye field (FEF) activity in rhesus monkeys, we found that saccade directionality and timing are influenced by the interaction between FEF visual neurons representing target and distractor stimuli. The FEF's role extends beyond a winner-takes-all approach, incorporating saccade vector averaging computations that produce curved saccades. Furthermore, ipsilateral visual neurons encode distractor suppression that drives curvature away from the distractor.

Prediction of carotid artery plaque area based on parallel multi-gate attention capture model.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a group of conditions involving the heart or blood vessels and is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Carotid artery plaque, as a key risk factor, is crucial for the early prevention and management of CVD. The purpose of this study is to combine clinical application and deep learning techniques to design a predictive model for the carotid artery plaque area. This model aims to identify individuals at high risk and reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease through the implementation of relevant preventive measures. This study proposes an innovative multi-gate attention capture (MGAC) model that utilizes data such as risk factors, laboratory tests, and physical examinations to predict the area of carotid artery plaque. Experimental findings reveal the superior performance of the MGAC model, surpassing other commonly used deep learning models with the following metrics: mean absolute error of 4.17, root mean square error of 10.89, mean logarithmic squared error of 0.21, and coefficient of determination of 0.98.

Receivers’ responses are integrated into costly third-party punishment in a way that interacts with the unfairness of allocations

Costly third-party punishment (TPP) is an effective way to enforce fairness norms and promote cooperation. Recent studies have shown that the third party considers not only the proposer’s suggested allocation but also the receiver’s response to the allocation, which was typically ignored in traditional TPP studies when making punishment decisions. However, it remains unclear whether and how the varying unfair allocations and receivers’ responses are integrated into third-party punishment. The current study addressed these issues at behavioral and electrophysiological levels by employing a modified third-party punishment task involving proposers’ highly or moderately unfair allocations and the receivers’ acceptance or rejection responses. At the behavioral level, participants punished proposers more often when receivers rejected relative to accepted unfair allocations. This effect was further modulated by the unfairness degree of allocations, indicated by a more pronounced rejection-sensitive effect when participants observed the moderately unfair offers. Electrophysiologically, when the receiver rejected the moderately unfair allocations, a stronger late-stage component P300/LPP, which was considered to be involved in allocations of attention resources, was found. Meanwhile, separated from the P300/LPP, the P200 associated with early attention capture demonstrated a rejection-sensitive effect. Together, in the costly TPP studies, the receiver is typically designated as passive and silent, and her/his responses to unfairness are conventionally ignored. However, our results indicate that except for the proposer’s distribution behavior, the receiver’s response does have an impact on third-party punishment in a way that interacts with the unfairness of allocations.

Multisensory working memory capture of attention.

During visual search, representations in working memory (WM) can guide the deployment of attention toward memory-matching visual input. Although previous studies have demonstrated that multisensory interactions facilitate WM and visual search, it remains unclear whether multisensory interaction influences attentional capture by WM. To address this issue, the present study adopted a dual-task paradigm, pairing a visual search task with a WM task, in which the memory modality was manipulated to be either visual or audiovisual. The results revealed that memory-driven attentional capture was observed under the visual and the audiovisual condition. Additionally, the capture effects and response time (RT) costs under the audiovisual condition were weaker than those under the visual condition, even on the trials with the earliest RTs. Furthermore, RT benefits under the audiovisual condition were comparable with those under the visual condition. These findings suggest that multisensory interactions can enhance cognitive control, leading to robust strategic effects and improved search performance. In this process, cognitive control tends to suppress the attentional capture by WM-matching distractors rather than enhance the attentional capture by WM-matching targets. The present study offers new insights into the influence of multisensory interactions on attentional capture by WM.

Do physical effort and electrical stimulations similarly affect attentional capture?

Do physical effort and electrical stimulations similarly affect attentional capture?

From attention capture to social coordination: “Abrupt onset” rallies joint planning

From attention capture to social coordination: “Abrupt onset” rallies joint planning

Neural evidence for attentional capture by salient distractors

Neural evidence for attentional capture by salient distractors