Getting it right from the start: Attentional control settings without a history of target selection
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Getting it right from the start: Attentional control settings without a history of target selection Maria Giammarco 1
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Lindsay Plater 1
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Jack Hryciw 1 & Naseem Al-Aidroos 1
Accepted: 27 October 2020 # The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020
Abstract 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. Keywords Attentional capture . Attentional control settings . Feature priming . Top-down control . Target-selection history
One of the enduring debates in cognition surrounds the automaticity of attentional capture: Do salient stimulus events, like the flashing lights on an ambulance, always automatically draw our attention to their spatial location, or only when we want them to? The evidence that capture is under our control comes from the attentional control setting literature (Burnham, 2007; Büsel, Voracek, & Ansorge, 2020; Folk, Remington, & Johnston, 1992; Lamy, Leber, & Egeth, 2012). Depending on our goals, we adopt attentional control settings that prioritize processing of the relevant portions of our environment, and capture is contingent on these control settings. For example, red stimuli will capture our attention when we are searching for something red, but not when searching for something green (Folk & Remington, 1998). Demonstrations that capture is contingent on attentional control settings, however, have been challenged in numerous * Naseem Al-Aidroos [email protected] 1
Psychology Department, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road E, Guelph
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