Affiliation:
1. Department of Psychology and Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences, School of Education Guangzhou University 510006 Guangzhou China
Abstract
AbstractAttention is the process of selecting relevant information and suppressing irrelevant information. However, it is still controversial whether attentional capture by salient but task‐irrelevant stimuli operates in a bottom‐up fashion (stimulus‐driven theory) or a top‐down fashion (goal‐driven theory) or if even salient distractors can be suppressed before capturing attention (signal suppression theory). In the present study, we investigated how saliency affects attentional capture (indexed by N2‐posterior‐contralateral [N2pc]) and suppression (indexed by distractor positivity [PD]) of abrupt‐onset and color singleton distractors in a visual search task. Experiment 1 showed that an abrupt‐onset distractor elicited both N2pc and PD, while a color singleton distractor elicited only PD. Moreover, the abrupt‐onset distractor elicited a larger N2pc and a larger PD relative to the color singleton distractor. In addition, both distractors elicited an early positive component, the positivity posterior contralateral (Ppc), which was also larger for abrupt onsets than for color singletons. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that when both the abrupt onset and color singleton were designed as targets, and thus required no attentional suppression, Ppc was elicited, but PD was not. This corroborated the finding in Experiment 1 that the later PD, not the early Ppc, reflected attentional suppression. Therefore, a more salient distractor demonstrates stronger early perceptual processing, can capture attention better and needs more attentional resources to be suppressed later. Based on these results, a three‐stage hypothesis is proposed, in which the saliency of a distractor modulates processing at early perception, attentional capture, and suppression stages.
Funder
National Science and Technology Major Project
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Subject
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology,Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology,Biological Psychiatry,Cognitive Neuroscience,Developmental Neuroscience,Endocrine and Autonomic Systems,Neurology,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology,Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology,General Neuroscience
Cited by
6 articles.
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