Distractor Frequency Research Articles

An examination of the motivation to manage distraction

Individuals exhibit limited awareness of when their attention is captured by salient but irrelevant stimuli, and it has long been argued that involuntary attentional capture by such stimuli is minimally disruptive to information processing. Yet, robust mechanisms of distractor suppression are hypothesized to support the control of attention, which presumably serve in the interest of managing distraction. In the present study, I examine whether participants are aware of the cost of distraction with respect to task performance, and whether they are motivated to manage this cost even when it is effortful to do so. Across three experiments, participants were willing to exert physical effort in order to reduce the frequency with which they encountered physically salient distractors, and in a fourth experiment tended to prefer trials with fewer distractors when given a choice over distractor frequency. Importantly, the amount of physical effort exerted varied as a function of the degree to which task-irrelevant distractors impaired search performance, suggesting that people are sensitive to the cost of distraction.

Reward expectation enhances reactive control of distraction by emotionally negative stimuli.

Reward expectation reduces the interference of task-irrelevant emotional distractors by improving cognitive control. The current study investigated the effects of reward expectation on proactive and reactive cognitive control of negative distractors. Reward expectation (incentive vs. nonincentive trials) was manipulated by a precue signaling the opportunity to gain an extra monetary reward for fast and accurate response on a given trial, followed by the trial display with the response-relevant target stimuli in the periphery and an irrelevant, negative, or neutral distractor in the center. The frequency of negative distractors (high vs. low) was manipulated to induce a proactive or reactive control mode (between-participants factor). Mutilation images and angry faces were used as negative distractors in Experiments 1 (1A and 1B) and 2, respectively. Results revealed performance to be generally facilitated by reward expectation, and impaired by negative (vs. neutral) distractors. Importantly, reward expectation rendered a reduction of negative-distractor interference when observers operated in reactive (vs. proactive) control mode. Moreover, the interaction between reward expectation and cognitive control strategy was modulated by the emotional strength of the negative distractors (mutilation images vs. angry faces). Thus, reward incentive leads to more effective filtering of negative (emotional) distractors when these occur rarely (reactive control) rather than frequently (proactive control), especially with emotionally strong negative distractors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Infrequent facial expressions of emotion do not bias attention.

Despite the obvious importance of facial expressions of emotion, most studies have found that they do not bias attention. A critical limitation, however, is that these studies generally present face distractors on all trials of the experiment. For other kinds of emotional stimuli, such as emotional scenes, infrequently presented stimuli elicit greater attentional bias than frequently presented stimuli, perhaps due to suppression or habituation. The goal of the current study then was to test whether such modulation of attentional bias by distractor frequency generalizes to facial expressions of emotion. In Experiment 1, both angry and happy faces were unable to bias attention, despite being infrequently presented. Even when the location of these face cues were more unpredictable-presented in one of two possible locations-still no attentional bias was observed (Experiment 2). Moreover, there was no bottom-up influence for angry and happy faces shown under high or low perceptual load (Experiment 3). We conclude that task-irrelevant posed facial expressions of emotion cannot bias attention even when presented infrequently.

Decreasing the options’ number in multiple choice questions in the assessment of senior medical students and its effect on exam psychometrics and distractors’ function

BackgroundStudies that have investigated the effect options’ number in MCQ tests used in the assessments of senior medical students are scarce. This study aims to compare exam psychometrics between three- and five-option MCQ tests in final-year assessments.MethodsA cluster randomized study was applied. Participants were classified into three groups, according to their academic levels. Students in each of those levels were randomized into either the three- or five-option test groups.ResultsMean time to finish the five-option test was 45 min, versus 32 min for the three-option group. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.89 for the three-option group, versus 0.81 for the five-options, p-value = 0.19. The mean difficulty index for the three-option group was 0.75, compared to 0.73 for the five-option group, p-value = 0.57. The mean discriminating index was 0.53 for the three-option group, and 0.45 for the five-options, p-value = 0.07. The frequency of non-functioning distractors was higher in the five-option test, 111 (56%), versus 39 (39%) in the three-options, with p-value < 0.01.ConclusionsThis study has shown that three-option MCQs are comparable to five-option MCQs, in terms of exam psychometrics. Three-option MCQs are superior to five-option tests regarding distractors’ effectiveness and saving administrative time.

Increasing the duration of an intervening distractor word can increase repetition blindness: Evidence for interitem competition in rapid visual sequences.

In rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), accurate report of a critical item (C2) declines when an earlier critical item (C1) is identical rather than unrelated. The most prominent theories of this phenomenon of repetition blindness (RB) concern the effects of processing C1 on later processing of C2. However, characteristics of distractor items between C1 and C2 strongly moderate RB, suggesting that items may compete for registration as separate events. We investigated interitem competition by manipulating the word frequency of distractors and C2s, and introducing novel manipulations of C1 and distractor duration. The frequency manipulations affected overall performance but not the size of RB; C2 reporting accuracy improved when distractors were of higher frequency and, contrary to typical results in lexical tasks, when C2s were of lower frequency. These results align with a competition model in which lower frequency words have an advantage. C1 duration had no significant effects on performance. A new finding was that increasing distractor duration had no main effect on performance but did increase the size of RB. The difficulty of registering a repeated C2 in memory under time pressure is exacerbated by the competitive effects of a temporally adjacent word of longer duration. The findings add to other evidence that interitem competition is important in RB and in processing of rapid visual sequences more generally. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Learning to suppress likely distractor locations in visual search is driven by the local distractor frequency.

Salient but task-irrelevant distractors interfere less with visual search when they appear in a display region where distractors have appeared more frequently in the past ("distractor-location probability cuing"). This effect could reflect the (re-)distribution of a global, limited attentional "inhibition resource." Accordingly, changing the frequency of distractor appearance in one display region should also affect the magnitude of interference generated by distractors in a different region. Alternatively, distractor-location learning may reflect a local response (e.g., "habituation") to distractors occurring at a particular location. In this case, the local distractor frequency in one display region should not affect distractor interference in a different region. To decide between these alternatives, we conducted three experiments in which participants searched for an orientation-defined target while ignoring a more salient orientation distractor that occurred more often in one versus another display region. Experiment 1 varied the ratio of distractors appearing in the frequent versus rare regions (60/40-90/10), with a fixed global distractor frequency. The results revealed the probability-cuing effect to increase with increasing probability ratio. In Experiments 2 and 3, one ("test") region was assigned the same local distractor frequency as in one of the conditions of Experiment 1, but a different frequency in the other region-dissociating local from global distractor frequency. Together, the three experiments showed that distractor interference in the test region was not significantly influenced by the frequency in the other region, consistent with purely local learning. We discuss the implications for theories of statistical distractor-location learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

When words collide: Bayesian meta-analyses of distractor and target properties in the picture-word interference paradigm.

In the picture-word interference paradigm, participants name pictures while ignoring a written or spoken distractor word. Naming times to the pictures are slowed down by the presence of the distractor word. The present study investigates in detail the impact of distractor and target word properties on picture naming times, building on the seminal study by Miozzo and Caramazza. We report the results of several Bayesian meta-analyses based on 26 datasets. These analyses provide estimates of effect sizes and their precision for several variables and their interactions. They show the reliability of the distractor frequency effect on picture naming latencies (latencies decrease as the frequency of the distractor increases) and demonstrate for the first time the impact of distractor length, with longer naming latencies for trials with longer distractors. Moreover, distractor frequency interacts with target word frequency to predict picture naming latencies. The methodological and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Does it help to expect distraction? Attentional capture is attenuated by high distractor frequency but not by trial-to-trial predictability.

Salient distractors such as color singletons typically capture attention. Recent studies have shown that probabilistic expectations of color singletons' occurrence-even when their location and features are unpredictable-can eliminate attentional capture. Here we ask whether this effect, referred to as "second-order distractor suppression," (a) could be merely a result of repetition priming, and (b) is also observed when distractor occurrences are predictable within a sequence of trials? Experiment 1 introduces a novel approach for manipulating the frequency of distractor occurrence while controlling for intertrial priming by design, by embedding identical trial sequences in the to-be-compared conditions. We observed no elimination but significant attenuation of capture in the condition with a higher distractor frequency. In Experiments 2 and 3 we investigated the effect of the trial-to-trial predictability of distractor presence. Repeating regular distractor absent/present patterns did not result in attenuated capture compared with a random condition, not even when upcoming distractor presence was cued. Taken together, the results demonstrate that second-order distractor suppression is not merely a result of repetition priming. However, it is not a response to any type of expectation; this nonspecific type of suppression is almost instantly elicited by environments characterized by a high likelihood of distractors but not by distractor presence that can be anticipated on a trial-by-trial basis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Classic Visual Search Effects in an Additional Singleton Task: An Open Dataset.

Visual search refers to our ability to find what we are looking for among many competing visual inputs. Here, we report the availability of a rich dataset that replicates key visual search effects and shows that these effects are robust to several changes to the experimental design. Experiment 1 replicates classic findings from an additional singleton visual search task. First, participants are captured by a salient but irrelevant color singleton, as indexed by slower response times when a color singleton distractor is present versus absent. Second, attentional capture by a color singleton is reduced when the visual search array contains heterogeneous shapes rather than homogenous shapes. Finally, attentional capture by a color singleton is reduced when the display colors are repeated rather than switched unpredictably from trial to trial. Experiment 2 demonstrates that these classic visual search effects are robust to small procedural changes such as task timing (i.e., a 2–8 second rather than ~1 second inter-trial interval). Experiment 3 demonstrates that these classic effects are likewise robust to changes to the distractor frequency (75% rather than 50%) and to fully blocking versus interleaving blocks of two task conditions. All told, this dataset includes 8 sub-experiments, 190 participants and >210,000 trials, and it will serve as a useful resource for power analyses and exploratory analyses of visual search behaviors.

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.

Contextual Modulation of Emotional Distraction: Attentional Capture and Motivational Significance.

Emotional stimuli engage corticolimbic circuits and capture attention even when they are task-irrelevant distractors. Whether top-down or contextual factors can modulate the filtering of emotional distractors is a matter of debate. Recent studies have indicated that behavioral interference by emotional distractors habituates rapidly when the same stimuli are repeated across trials. However, little is known as to whether we can attenuate the impact of novel (never repeated) emotional distractors when they occur frequently. In two experiments, we investigated the effects of distractor frequency on the processing of task-irrelevant novel pictures, as reflected in both behavioral interference and neural activity, while participants were engaged in an orientation discrimination task. Experiment 1 showed that, compared with a rare distractor condition (20%), frequent distractors (80%) reduced the interference of emotional stimuli. Moreover, Experiment 2 provided evidence that emotional interference was reduced by distractor frequency even when rare, and unexpected, emotional distractors appeared among frequent neutral distractors. On the other hand, in both experiments, the late positive potential amplitude was enhanced for emotional, compared with neutral, pictures, and this emotional modulation was not reduced when distractors were frequently presented. Altogether, these findings suggest that the high occurrence of task-irrelevant stimuli does not proactively prevent the processing of emotional distractors. Even when attention allocation to novel emotional stimuli is reduced, evaluative processes and the engagement of motivational systems are needed to support the monitoring of the environment for significant events.

Evoked Response Strength in Primary Auditory Cortex Predicts Performance in a Spectro-Spatial Discrimination Task in Rats.

The extent to which the primary auditory cortex (A1) participates in instructing animal behavior remains debated. Although multiple studies have shown A1 activity to correlate with animals' perceptual judgments (Jaramillo and Zador, 2011; Bizley et al., 2013; Rodgers and DeWeese, 2014), others have found no relationship between A1 responses and reported auditory percepts (Lemus et al., 2009; Dong et al., 2011). To address this ambiguity, we performed chronic recordings of evoked local field potentials (eLFPs) in A1 of head-fixed female rats performing a two-alternative forced-choice auditory discrimination task. Rats were presented with two interleaved sequences of pure tones from opposite sides and had to indicate the side from which the higher-frequency target stimulus was played. Animal performance closely correlated (rrm = 0.68) with the difference between the target and distractor eLFP responses: the more the target response exceeded the distractor response, the better the animals were at identifying the side of the target frequency. Reducing the evoked response of either frequency through stimulus-specific adaptation affected performance in the expected way: target localization accuracy was degraded when the target frequency was adapted and improved when the distractor frequency was adapted. Target frequency eLFPs were stronger on hit trials than on error trials. Our results suggest that the degree to which one stimulus stands out over others within A1 activity may determine its perceptual saliency for the animals and accordingly bias their behavioral choices.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The brain must continuously calibrate the saliency of sensory percepts against their relevance to the current behavioral goal. The inability to ignore irrelevant distractors characterizes a spectrum of human attentional disorders. Meanwhile, the connection between the neural underpinnings of stimulus saliency and sensory decisions remains elusive. Here, we record local field potentials in the primary auditory cortex of rats engaged in auditory discrimination to investigate how the cortical representation of target and distractor stimuli impacts behavior. We find that the amplitude difference between target- and distractor-evoked activity predicts discrimination performance (rrm = 0.68). Specific adaptation of target or distractor shifts performance either below or above chance, respectively. It appears that recent auditory history profoundly influences stimulus saliency, biasing animals toward diametrically-opposed decisions.

Hemifield Crossings during Multiple Object Tracking Affect Task Performance and Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials

The ability to track multiple objects is important for daily life activities such as driving, but it is subject to some restrictions. One limitation concerns the hemifields in which objects move. A previous study showed that when subjects were restricted to the use of one hemifield, both the maximum number of tracked objects and the tracking accuracy were lower than when they were permitted to use both hemifields. However, daily life involves many tracked objects moving between hemifields. In this study, we investigated the effects of such hemifield crossings on behavioral performance (Behavioral experiment) and on the amplitudes and phase synchronization of steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) (SSVEP experiment) by comparing the Within condition, in which tracked objects moved within their respective hemifields, and the Crossover condition, in which tracked objects moved between hemifields. In the Behavioral experiment, tracking performance was worse under the Crossover condition than under the Within condition. In the SSVEP experiment, SSVEP amplitudes for target and distractor frequencies differed under the Within condition but did not differ under the Crossover condition. However, phase synchronization between the left and right hemifields exhibited the opposite trend. This study provides evidence that attention to objects moving between hemifields is suppressed relative to attention to objects moving within hemifields and that Crossover tracking diminishes attentional modulation at an early sensory processing level while modulating interhemispheric functional connectivity.

Attention capture during visual search: The consequences of distractor appeal, familiarity, and frequency

ABSTRACTVisual distractions can lure our attention and impede our everyday performance, especially if they are highly meaningful and appealing to the observer. The current research assessed how semantically rich, personally relevant distractors (i.e., cartoon characters), either appealing or neutral, capture attention and whether the frequency with which we encounter these distractors can impact the effects. Participants were slower to identify a target letter in the presence of a neutral distractor relative to an appealing distractor, reflecting covert attentional capture. However, this effect reversed when appealing distractors appeared less frequently than neutral distractors. Collectively, the evidence suggests that the amount of capture observed overall likely depends on the interplay between a distractor’s semantic salience (i.e., the amount of meaningful knowledge an observer has about the distractor), its affective salience (i.e., how the observer feels about the distractor), and how frequently it is encountered.

Dynamics of Feature-based Attentional Selection during Color-Shape Conjunction Search.

Feature-based attentional selection is accomplished by increasing the gain of sensory neurons encoding target-relevant features while decreasing that of other features. But how do these mechanisms work when targets and distractors share features? We investigated this in a simplified color-shape conjunction search task using ERP components (N2pc, PD, and SPCN) that index lateralized attentional processing. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the presence and frequency of color distractors while holding shape distractors constant. We tested the hypothesis that the color distractor would capture attention, requiring active suppression such that processing of the target can continue. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that color distractors consistently captured attention, as indexed by a significant N2pc, but were reactively suppressed (indexed by PD). Interestingly, when the color distractor was present, target processing was sustained (indexed by SPCN), suggesting that the dynamics of attentional competition involved distractor suppression interlinked with sustained target processing. In Experiment 2, we examined the contribution of shape to the dynamics of attentional competition under similar conditions. In contrast to color distractors, shape distractors did not reliably capture attention, even when the color distractor was very frequent and attending to target shape would be beneficial. Together, these results suggest that target-colored objects are prioritized during color-shape conjunction search, and the ability to select the target is delayed while target-colored distractors are actively suppressed.

Manipulations of distractor frequency do not mitigate emotion-induced blindness

ABSTRACTEmotional distractors can impair perception of subsequently presented targets, a phenomenon called emotion-induced blindness. Do emotional distractors lose their power to disrupt perception when appearing with increased frequency, perhaps due to desensitisation or enhanced recruitment of proactive control? Non-emotional tasks, such as the Stroop, have revealed that high frequency distractors or conflict lead to reduced interference, and distractor frequency appears to modulate attentional capture by emotional distractors in spatial attention tasks. But emotion-induced blindness is thought to reflect perceptual competition between targets and emotional distractors, and it is unclear whether high frequency emotional stimuli cause less disruption at this relatively early stage of processing. In four experiments, participants searched streams of images for a rotated target image. A negative or neutral distractor appeared before the target, and their relative frequency was manipulated. Across all experiments, the frequency of emotional distractors did not modulate emotion-induced blindness even when participants were explicitly informed that they would appear often or seldom. Thus, increased distractor frequency does not appear to mitigate the priority allotted to emotional distractors during perceptual competition.

Repetition blindness in priming in perceptual identification: Competitive effects of a word intervening between prime and target.

University students named a 72-ms masked target word that was preceded by two 120-ms consecutively presented words, a prime word followed by a distractor. In Experiment 1, all words were in lowercase letters, whereas in Experiment 2, the target word was changed to uppercase letters. In both experiments there was an accuracy and latency cost (repetition blindness: RB) when the prime was the same word as the target, with the cost much less severe in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1. A low-frequency distractor impaired target identification compared with a high-frequency distractor. Distractor frequency interacted with target frequency such that high-frequency targets preceded by low-frequency distractors had the lowest accuracy. The results are consistent with a frequency-dependent competition for access to working memory among briefly displayed words. However, there was no clear evidence that effects of target repetition on interword competition play a role in RB. The effects of a letter case change for the target are consistent with a contribution of token distinctiveness to word-order recovery in the intervening-word priming task.

Lateralization of simulated sources and echoes differing in frequency based on interaural temporal differences.

This study examined listeners' ability to process interaural temporal differences (ITDs) in one of two sequential sounds when the two differed in spectral content. A correlational analysis assessed weights given to ITDs of simulated source and echo pulses for echo delays of 8-128 ms for conditions in which responses were based on the source or echo, a 3000-Hz Gaussian (target) pulse. The other (distractor) pulse was spectrally centered at 1500, 2000, 3000, 4000, or 5000 Hz. Also measured were proportion correct and proportion of responses predicted from the weights. Regardless of whether the echo or source pulse served as the target, target weight, and proportion correct increased with increasing distractor frequency, consistent with low-frequency dominance [Divenyi, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 91, 1078-1084 (1992)]. Effects of distractor frequency were observed at echo delays out to 128 ms when the source served as the target, but only out to 64 ms when the echo served as the target. At echo delays beyond 8 ms, recency effects were exhibited with higher proportions correct obtained for judgments based on the echo pulse than the source pulse.

An investigation into the optimal number of distractors in single-best answer exams.

In UK medical schools, five-option single-best answer (SBA) questions are the most widely accepted format of summative knowledge assessment. However, writing SBA questions with four effective incorrect options is difficult and time consuming, and consequently, many SBAs contain a high frequency of implausible distractors. Previous research has suggested that fewer than five-options could hence be used for assessment, without deterioration in quality. Despite an existing body of empirical research in this area however, evidence from undergraduate medical education is sparse. The study investigated the frequency of non-functioning distractors in a sample of 480 summative SBA questions at Cardiff University. Distractor functionality was analysed, and then various question models were tested to investigate the impact of reducing the number of distractors per question on examination difficulty, reliability, discrimination and pass rates. A survey questionnaire was additionally administered to 108 students (33 % response rate) to gain insight into their perceptions of these models. The simulation of various exam models revealed that, for four and three-option SBA models, pass rates, reliability, and mean item discrimination remained relatively constant. The average percentage mark however consistently increased by 1–3 % with the four and three-option models, respectively. The questionnaire survey revealed that the student body had mixed views towards the proposed format change. This study is one of the first to comprehensively investigate distractor performance in SBA examinations in undergraduate medical education. It provides evidence to suggest that using three-option SBA questions would maximise efficiency whilst maintaining, or possibly improving, psychometric quality, through allowing a greater number of questions per exam paper.

Early and Late Electrophysiological Effects of Distractor Frequency in Picture Naming: Reconciling Input and Output Accounts.

The "distractor-frequency effect" refers to the finding that high-frequency (HF) distractor words slow picture naming less than low-frequency distractors in the picture-word interference paradigm. Rival input and output accounts of this effect have been proposed. The former attributes the effect to attentional selection mechanisms operating during distractor recognition, whereas the latter attributes it to monitoring/decision mechanisms operating on distractor and target responses in an articulatory buffer. Using high-density (128-channel) EEG, we tested hypotheses from these rival accounts. In addition to conducting stimulus- and response-locked whole-brain corrected analyses, we investigated the correct-related negativity, an ERP observed on correct trials at fronto-central electrodes proposed to reflect the involvement of domain general monitoring. The whole-brain ERP analysis revealed a significant effect of distractor frequency at inferior right frontal and temporal sites between 100 and 300-msec post-stimulus onset, during which lexical access is thought to occur. Response-locked, region of interest (ROI) analyses of fronto-central electrodes revealed a correct-related negativity starting 121 msec before and peaking 125 msec after vocal onset on the grand averages. Slope analysis of this component revealed a significant difference between HF and low-frequency distractor words, with the former associated with a steeper slope on the time window spanning from 100 msec before to 100 msec after vocal onset. The finding of ERP effects in time windows and components corresponding to both lexical processing and monitoring suggests the distractor frequency effect is most likely associated with more than one physiological mechanism.