Attentional capture by object appearance and disappearance

In two experiments we examined whether the appearance of a new object has attentional priority over disappearance. Previous failures to show differences are possibly due to onsets and offsets always being presented as a sole visual transient. Rather than presenting each alone, we presented onset and offset singletons simultaneously with a display-wide luminance transient in order to force each to compete with other visual events. Results from Experiment 1 showed that targets associated with onsets accrued a reaction time benefit whilst targets associated with offsets did not. Experiment 2 showed that onsets attracted attention even when observers were attentionally set to look for offset. By contrast, offsets needed a relevant attentional set in order to attract attention. We argue that the appearance of an object has attentional priority over disappearance.     

Attentional mechanisms associated with repressive distancing

This research explores the role of attentional shift and disengagement in repressive distancing. During a target-detection task in which emotional and neutral facial expressions were used as cues, participants received performance feedback intended to elicit a negative emotional reaction that rendered the task either threatening or not threatening to self-concept. When the task was perceived to threaten self-concept, repressors distanced themselves by rapidly disengaging their attention from the facial expressions rather than by slowly shifting or not shifting their attention to the facial expressions. Attentional disengagement was accompanied by sympathetic nervous system activity suggestive of a defense response. This research provides further insight into the nature and consequences of the interplay of dispositional tendencies, situational contexts, and higher order cognitive influences in attentional behavior.     

Attentional capture by motion onsets is spatially imprecise

Using straight translatory motion of a visual peripheral cue in the frontoparallel plane, and probing target discrimination at different positions along the cue's motion trajectory, we found that target orientation discrimination was slower for targets presented at or near the position of motion onset (4.2° off centre), relative to the onset of a static cue (Experiment 1), and relative to targets presented further along the motion trajectory (Experiments 1 and 2). Target discrimination was equally fast and accurate in the moving cue conditions relative to static cue conditions at positions further along the cue's motion trajectory (Experiment 1). Moreover, target orientation discrimination was not slowed at the same position, once this position was no longer the motion onset position (Experiment 3), and performance in a target colour-discrimination task was not slowed even at motion onset (Experiment 4). Finally, we found that the onset location of the motion cue was perceived as being shifted in the direction of the cue's motion (Experiment 5). These results indicate that attention cannot be as quickly or precisely shifted to the onset of a motion stimulus as to other positions on a stimulus’ motion trajectory.     

The presence of threat affects saccade trajectories

In everyday life, fast identification and processing of threat-related stimuli is of critical importance for survival. Previous studies suggested that spatial attention is automatically allocated to threatening stimuli, such as angry faces. However, in the previous studies the threatening stimuli were not completely irrelevant for the task. In the present study we used saccadic curvature to investigate whether attention is automatically allocated to threatening emotional information. Participants had to make an endogenous saccade up or down while an irrelevant face paired with an object was present in the periphery. The eyes curved away more from the angry faces than from either neutral or happy faces. This effect was not observed when the faces were inverted, excluding the possible role of low-level differences. Since the angry faces were completely irrelevant to the task, the results suggest that attention is automatically allocated to the threatening stimuli, which generates activity in the oculomotor system, and biases behaviour.     

Attentional modulation of visual-evoked potentials by threat: investigating the effect of evolutionary relevance

In dot-probe tasks, threatening cues facilitate attention to targets and enhance the amplitude of the target P1 peak of the visual-evoked potential. While theories have suggested that evolutionarily relevant threats should obtain preferential neural processing, this has not been examined empirically. In this study we examined the effects of evolutionarily relevant (e.g. spiders and snakes) and irrelevant (e.g. knifes and syringes) threatening cues. Non-predictive threatening cues (in left or right visual field) were paired with non-threatening cues and were followed by neutral targets in the same or opposite location. The amplitude of the target P1 was increased in contralateral electrodes when the target followed in the same location as the threatening cues. This effect did not interact with evolutionary relevance. Both evolutionary relevant and evolutionary irrelevant threats led to increased P1 amplitude, although the effect was stronger for modern threats. We conclude that the threat-superiority effect is robust and largely independent of the type of threatening stimulus.     

Attentional interference by threat and post-traumatic stress disorder: The role of thought control strategies

Attentional interference by threat is associated with PTSD, but the mechanisms of this relationship remain unclear. Attentional interference might be related to increased use of maladaptive thought control strategies, such as suppressing unwanted thoughts (thought suppression) or replacing threatening thoughts with everyday concerns (worry), which increase PTSD risk. Conversely, attentional interference might be associated with reduced use of adaptive strategies, such as talking about threatening thoughts (social control), which decrease PTSD risk. This study tested if thought control strategies mediate the relationship between attentional interference and PTSD. Sixty-one male Vietnam-era veterans completed measures of PTSD symptoms and thought control strategies. Participants also completed a Visual Search Task measuring attentional interference, which required participants to identify a target letter string among a group of threat or neutral words. Attentional interference by threat was related to PTSD symptoms, and mediation analyses revealed significant indirect effects of attentional interference through thought suppression and worry. Attentional interference was related to re-experiencing and avoidance, but not hyperarousal, symptom clusters. Thought suppression was a unique mediator for re-experiencing, whereas thought suppression and worry both mediated the relationship with avoidance. These results offer evidence for maladaptive thought control strategies as a mechanism linking attentional biases for threat to PTSD.     

The eACS: Attentional control in the presence of emotion

We present a questionnaire – The Emotional Attentional Control Scale (eACS) – An adaptation of the original Attentional Control Scale (ACS) that assesses the voluntary control of attention. A low score on the ACS has been associated with high levels of anxiety and depression. As the ACS items are affectively neutral, some people scoring high on the ACS may still show low levels of attentional control (AC) in more emotionally-demanding situations. We propose that the eACS, which focuses on the emotional modulation of AC, may explain additional variance in AC deficits associated with psychopathology.     

You can't stop new motion: Attentional capture despite a control set for colour

When a stationary object begins to move, visual spatial attention is reflexively deployed to the location of that object. We tested whether this capture of attention by new motion is entirely stimulus driven, or whether it is contingent on an observer's goals. Participants monitored a visual display for a colour change, inducing an attentional control set (ACS) for colour. Across the three performed experiments, irrelevant new-motion cues always captured visual spatial attention, despite the ACS for colour. This persistence of the attentional cueing effect demonstrates that ACSs, in particular an ACS for colour, cannot prevent new motion from capturing attention. Unlike other stimulus types, such as luminance changes, colour singletons, and new objects, new motion may always capture attention regardless of an observer's goals. This conclusion entails that new motion is an important determinant of when, and to where, visual spatial attention is deployed.     

Attentional training of the appetitive motivation system: Effects on sensation seeking preferences and reward-based behavior

Motivation is seen to guide selective attention in favor of motivation-consistent stimuli. However, such links may be bi-directional in nature, such that selective attention processes may also bias and determine one’s motivational state. In the present study, we examined the latter direction of influence by randomly assigning participants to one of two conditions designed to train selective attention either toward or away from rewarding word stimuli. The effects of this manipulation were examined in terms of approach-related intentions, emotional state, and reward-reactive behavior. It was found that the selective attention manipulation influenced preferences and behavior, but not conscious emotional state. Findings are discussed in relation to implications for motivation, cognition, and emotion.

Attentional capture by singletons is contingent on top-down control settings: Evidence from electrophysiological measures

The present study examined whether the capture of spatial attention is driven by stimulus salience (e.g., object uniqueness) or by a match to current attentional control settings (contingent capture). We measured the N2pc effect, a component of the event-related brain potential thought to reflect lateralized attentional allocation. On every trial, a noninformative cue display containing a colour singleton box was followed by a target display of letters. Participants searched for a target letter in a specified colour (in Experiments 1–3) or within a specified shape (in Experiment 4) while ignoring other stimuli. The key manipulation was whether the singleton cue contained the target-defining feature (e.g., a specific colour). Experiment 1 revealed signs of attention capture—a cue validity effect and an N2pc effect—only for singleton cues that contained the target-defining feature. This pattern persisted even when we increased the salience of the singleton box (Experiments 2 and 3). Irrelevant colour singletons also failed to produce a significant N2pc effect when the target was defined based on shape rather than colour (Experiment 4). We conclude that attention capture is strongly contingent on top-down attentional control settings, not bottom-up stimulus salience.     

Attentional capture by onsets and offsets

Three experiments were conducted to examine whether human infants would form a categorical representation for the spatial relation between. Experiment 1 showed that 6- and 7-month-olds familiarized with stimuli depicting a diamond in different locations between two reference bars subsequently preferred a stimulus displaying the diamond located outside the bars over a stimulus displaying the diamond located in a novel position between the bars. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that this preference could not be attributed to a failure to discriminate the location changes of the diamond between the bars or an a priori preference. The overall pattern of results indicates that 6- and 7-month-olds had formed a categorical representation for between. The findings are discussed in terms of factors affecting development of categorical representations for spatial relation information.     

Attentional capture by auto- and allo-cues

In a host of studies, the ability of various types of cues to capture attention has been examined. This article reviews a number of these studies by organizing them into a classification scheme based on the relationship between the putative attention-capturing item (the cue) and the item used to assess the distribution of attention (the probe). The second dimension of this taxonomy divides paradigms of attentional capture into those in which capture is indexed by performance benefits and those in which capture is indexed by performance costs. The relative methodological merits and disadvantages of the paradigms that occupy each of the cells of the resulting two-by-two matrix are discussed. A final section offers a new interpretation of the finding that dynamic cues capture attention.     

Attentional capture by irrelevant color singletons

Four experiments investigated attentional capture by a color singleton in visual search for a nonsingleton target. B. S. Gibson and E. M. Kelsey (1998) found that a color singleton in a precuing array facilitated target discrimination at that location if the same color also signaled the target array onset. The authors found similar cuing effects regardless of whether the singleton color matched the target array and regardless of whether subjects could anticipate the singleton or target-array color. In Experiment 4, a color singleton captured attention when it appeared in the precuing array but not when it appeared in the target array. The results indicate that attentional control settings for displaywide attributes are imprecise: Although subjects may anticipate a specific color, they cannot avoid attentional capture by other irrelevant colors. In addition, the effect of irrelevant singletons depends on whether a target is simultaneously present in the array.     

Attentional capture by globally defined objects

The abrupt appearance of a new perceptual object in the visual field typically captures visual attention. However, if attention is focused in advance on a different location, onsets can fail to capture attention (Yantis & Jonides, 1990). In the present experiments, we investigated the extent to which the deployment of attention to the local level of a hierarchical scene may be affected by the abrupt appearance of a new object at the global level. Participants searched for a semi-disk target in an array of randomly oriented segmented disks (“pacmen”). On half the trials, a subset of the segmented disks induced a subjective square. On these critical trials, participants were significantly slower to respond to the presence of a local target even though the local features of the display were qualitatively identical across all conditions. This slowing was absent when outline pacmen were used (which do not induce subjective figures) and when the subjective square was perceptually old. When the participants’ task was defined at the global level of the display, a new local element failed to capture attention, suggesting an asymmetry in the ability of objects at different levels of a hierarchical scene to capture attention. In a control experiment, a new local element captured attention, however, when the participants’ task was defined at the local level, indicating that the local item was in principle capable of capturing attention. It is argued that global objects capture attention because they convey important information about the environment that is not available at the local level.     

Attention capture by faces

We report three experiments that investigate whether faces are capable of capturing attention when in competition with other non-face objects. In Experiment 1a participants took longer to decide that an array of objects contained a butterfly target when a face appeared as one of the distracting items than when the face did not appear in the array. This irrelevant face effect was eliminated when the items in the arrays were inverted in Experiment 1b ruling out an explanation based on some low-level image-based properties of the faces. Experiment 2 replicated and extended the results of Experiment 1a. Irrelevant faces once again interfered with search for butterflies but, when the roles of faces and butterflies were reversed, irrelevant butterflies no longer interfered with search for faces. This suggests that the irrelevant face effect is unlikely to have been caused by the relative novelty of the faces or arises because butterflies and faces were the only animate items in the arrays. We conclude that these experiments offer evidence of a stimulus-driven capture of attention by faces.     

Attentional capture by globally defined objects.

The abrupt appearance of a new perceptual object in the visual field typically captures visual attention. However, if attention is focused in advance on a different location, onsets can fail to capture attention (Yantis & Jonides, 1990). In the present experiments, we investigated the extent to which the deployment of attention to the local level of a hierarchical scene may be affected by the abrupt appearance of a new object at the global level. Participants searched for a semi-disk target in an array of randomly oriented segmented disks ("pacmen"). On half the trials, a subset of the segmented disks induced a subjective square. On these critical trials, participants were significantly slower to respond to the presence of a local target even though the local features of the display were qualitatively identical across all conditions. This slowing was absent when outline pacmen were used (which do not induce subjective figures) and when the subjective square was perceptually old. When the participants' task was defined at the global level of the display, a new local element failed to capture attention, suggesting an asymmetry in the ability of objects at different levels of a hierarchical scene to capture attention. In a control experiment, a new local element captured attention, however, when the participants' task was defined at the local level, indicating that the local item was in principle capable of capturing attention. It is argued that global objects capture attention because they convey important information about the environment that is not available at the local level.     

Attentional capture by emotional faces in adolescence

Poor decision making during adolescence occurs most frequently when situations are emotionally charged. However, relatively few studies have measured the development of cognitive control in response to emotional stimuli in this population. This study used both affective (emotional faces) and non-affective (letter) stimuli in two different flanker tasks to assess the ability to ignore task-irrelevant but distracting information, in 25 adults and 25 adolescents. On the non-emotional (letter) flanker task, the presence of incongruent flanking letters increased the number of errors, and also slowed participants’ ability to identify a central letter. Adolescents committed more errors than adults, but there were no age-related differences for the reaction time interference effect in the letter condition. Post-hoc testing revealed that age-related differences on the task were driven by the younger adolescents (11-14 years); adults and older adolescents (15-17 years) were equally accurate in the letter condition. In contrast, on the emotional face flanker task, not only were adolescents less accurate than adults but they were also more distracted by task-irrelevant fearful faces as evidenced by greater reaction time interference effects. Our findings suggest that the ability to self-regulate in adolescents, as evidenced by the ability to suppress irrelevant information on a flanker task, is more difficult when stimuli are affective in nature. The ability to ignore irrelevant flankers appears to mature earlier for non-affective stimuli than for affective stimuli.     

Attentional capture by irrelevant emotional distractor faces

We establish attentional capture by emotional distractor faces presented as a "singleton" in a search task in which the emotion is entirely irrelevant. Participants searched for a male (or female) target face among female (or male) faces and indicated whether the target face was tilted to the left or right. The presence (vs. absence) of an irrelevant emotional singleton expression (fearful, angry, or happy) in one of the distractor faces slowed search reaction times compared to the singleton absent or singleton target conditions. Facilitation for emotional singleton targets was found for the happy expression but not for the fearful or angry expressions. These effects were found irrespective of face gender and the failure of a singleton neutral face to capture attention among emotional faces rules out a visual odd-one-out account for the emotional capture. The present study thus establishes irrelevant, emotional, attentional capture.     

Attentional dwelling and capture by color singletons

Can salient stimuli—such as color singletons and abrupt onsets—involuntarily capture spatial attention? We previously reported evidence that abrupt onsets can capture attention, but the effects of this capture can become latent under easy visual search. The present experiments examined whether a similar pattern of latent capture occurs for task-irrelevant color singletons. Participants searched for a perfect circle among oval distractors. We manipulated search difficulty by varying the width of the oval distractors, making them more or less target-like (i.e., more or less circular). With search displays of homogeneous distractors, cue validity effects increased linearly with search difficulty, indicating capture by color singletons (Experiments 1 and 2). With heterogeneous distractors, however, discouraging the use of singleton-detection mode to find the target circle, cue validity effects from color singletons were negligible at all difficulty levels (Experiment 3). Using these exact same heterogeneous search displays, meanwhile, abrupt onsets produced very large cue validity effects (Experiment 4). We conclude that whereas abrupt onsets can capture attention based purely on salience, static color singletons capture attention only when made task-relevant by promoting singleton-detection mode (i.e., contingent capture). The data further support an attentional dwelling account of capture costs and reinforce the recommendation that, to ensure sensitivity to detect the presence (or absence) of attention capture, capture experiments should employ a difficult visual search.