Salient distractor processing: inhibition following attentional capture.

Salient objects often capture attention in a purely exogenous way, followed by inhibition of their locations after a period. Yet, the neural circuits underlying the exogenous attention remain underspecified. Seidel Malkinson et al.

Neural evidence for attentional capture by salient distractors.

Salient objects often capture our attention, serving as distractors and hindering our current goals. It remains unclear when and how salient distractors interact with our goals, and our knowledge on the neural mechanisms responsible for attentional capture is limited to a few brain regions recorded from non-human primates. Here we conducted a multivariate analysis on human intracranial signals covering most brain regions and successfully dissociated distractor-specific representations from target-arousal signals in the high-frequency (60-100 Hz) activity.

Long-term memory retrieval bypasses working memory.

For decades, it has been assumed that when humans retrieve information from long-term memory (LTM), information need first to be brought back into working memory (WM). However, as WM capacity is limited, it is unclear what happens if information from LTM needs to be retrieved while WM is fully engaged? To address this question, observers had to retrieve colors from LTM while WM storage capacity was fully engaged. The behavioral results showed that retrieving information from LTM is possible even when WM capacity is fully occupied.

Visual Working Memory Adapts to the Nature of Anticipated Interference.

Visual working memory has been proven to be relatively robust against interference. However, little is known on whether such robust coding is obligatory, or can be flexibly recruited depending on its expected usefulness. To address this, participants remembered both the color and orientation of a grating.

Spatial enhancement due to statistical learning tracks the estimated spatial probability.

It is well known that attentional selection is sensitive to the regularities presented in the display. In the current study we employed the additional singleton paradigm and systematically manipulated the probability that the target would be presented in one particular location within the display (probabilities of 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, and 90%). The results showed the higher the target probability, the larger the performance benefit for high- relative to low-probability locations both when a distractor was present and when it was absent.

Automatically binding relevant and irrelevant features in visual working memory.

It is generally assumed that, to save storage space, features are stored as integrated objects in visual working memory (VWM). Although such an object-based account does not always hold because features can be processed in parallel, a previous study has shown that different features can be automatically bound with their locations (task-irrelevant feature) into an integrated unit, resulting in improved memory performance. The present study was designed to further explore this phenomenon by investigating whether other features, which are not spatial in origin, can act as the binding cue to form such automatic binding.

Across-trial spatial suppression in visual search.

In order to focus on objects of interest, humans must be able to avoid distraction by salient stimuli that are not relevant to the task at hand. Many recent studies have shown that through statistical learning we are able to suppress the location that is most likely to contain a salient distractor. Here we demonstrate a remarkable flexibility in attentional suppression.

Spatial suppression due to statistical learning tracks the estimated spatial probability.

People are sensitive to regularities in the environment. Recent studies employing the additional singleton paradigm showed that a singleton distractor that appeared more often in one specific location than in all other locations may lead to attentional suppression of high-probability distractor locations. This in turn effectively reduced the attentional capture effect by the salient distractor singleton.

Salience determines attentional orienting in visual selection.

Recently the signal-suppression account was proposed, positing that salient stimuli automatically produce a bottom-up salience signal that can be suppressed via top-down control processes. Evidence for this hybrid account came from a capture-probe paradigm that showed that while searching for a specific shape, observers suppressed the location of the irrelevant color singleton. Here we replicate these findings but also show that this occurs only for search arrays with 4 elements.

Proactively location-based suppression elicited by statistical learning.

Recently, Wang and Theeuwes used the additional singleton task and showed that attentional capture was reduced for the location that was likely to contain a distractor [1]. It is argued that due to statistical learning, the location that was likely to contain a distractor was suppressed relative to all other locations. The current study replicated these findings and by adding a search-probe condition, we were able to determine the initial distribution of attentional resources across the visual field.

Visual memory benefits from prolonged encoding time regardless of stimulus type.

It is generally assumed that the storage capacity of visual working memory (VWM) is limited, holding about 3-4 items. Recent work with real-world objects, however, has challenged this view by providing evidence that the VWM capacity for real-world objects is not fixed but instead increases with prolonged encoding time (Brady, Störmer, & Alvarez, 2016). Critically, in this study, no increase with prolonged encoding time was observed for storing simple colors.

Implicit attentional biases in a changing environment.

The current study investigates whether statistical regularities that change over time affect attentional selection. While searching for a target singleton, the distractor singleton was presented much more often in one location than in all other locations. Crucially, the location that had a distractor much more often, changed to new locations during the course of the experiment.

Anticipatory Distractor Suppression Elicited by Statistical Regularities in Visual Search.

Salient yet irrelevant objects often capture our attention and interfere with our daily tasks. Distraction by salient objects can be reduced by suppressing the location where they are likely to appear. The question we addressed here was whether suppression of frequent distractor locations is already implemented beforehand, in anticipation of the stimulus.

Statistical regularities induce spatial as well as feature-specific suppression.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 45(10) of (see record 2019-57445-001). In the article, Figure 1 was an older version and has been updated. All versions of this article have been corrected.

Statistical regularities bias overt attention.

A previous study employing the additional singleton paradigm showed that a singleton distractor that appeared more often in one specific location interfered less with target search than when it appeared at any other location. These findings suggested that through statistical learning the location that was likely to contain a distractor was suppressed relative to all other locations. Even though feasible, it is also possible that this effect is due to faster disengagement of attention from the high-probability distractor location.

Spatial suppression due to statistical regularities is driven by distractor suppression not by target activation.

Where and what we attend to is not only determined by what we are currently looking for but also by what we have encountered in the past. Recent studies suggest that biasing the probability by which distractors appear at locations in visual space may lead to attentional suppression of high-probability distractor locations, which effectively reduces capture by a distractor but also impairs target selection at this location. However, in many of these studies introducing a high-probability distractor location was equivalent to increasing the probability of the target appearing in any of the other locations (i.

Statistical regularities modulate attentional capture independent of search strategy.

An earlier study using the additional singleton task showed that statistical regularities regarding the distractor location can cause an attentional bias that affects the amount of attentional capture by distractors and the efficiency of selection of targets. The distractor singleton was systematically present more often in one location than in all other locations. The present study investigated whether this bias also occurs when observers adopt a feature search mode, i.

How to inhibit a distractor location? Statistical learning versus active, top-down suppression.

Recently, Wang and Theeuwes (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 44(1), 13-17, 2018a) demonstrated the role of lingering selection biases in an additional singleton search task in which the distractor singleton appeared much more often in one location than in all other locations. For this location, there was less capture and selection efficiency was reduced. It was argued that statistical learning induces plasticity within the spatial priority map such that particular locations that are high likely to contain a distractor are suppressed relative to all other locations.

Statistical regularities modulate attentional capture.

The present study investigated whether statistical regularities can influence visual selection. We used the classic additional singleton task in which participants search for a salient shape singleton while ignoring a color distractor singleton. The color distractor singleton was systematically presented more often in 1 location than in all other locations.

Inhibition of return revisited: Localized inhibition on top of a pervasive bias.

An inhibitory after-effect of attention, frequently referred to as inhibition of return (IOR), operates at a previously attended location to discourage perseverative orienting. Using the classic cueing task, previous work has shown that IOR is not restricted to a previously attended location, but rather spreads to adjacent visual space in a graded manner. The present study expands on this earlier work by exploring a wider visual region and a broader range of cue-target onset asynchronies (CTOAs) to characterize the temporal dynamics of the IOR gradient.

When shorter delays lead to worse memories: Task disruption makes visual working memory temporarily vulnerable to test interference.

Evidence shows that visual working memory (VWM) is strongly served by attentional mechanisms, whereas other evidence shows that VWM representations readily survive when attention is being taken away. To reconcile these findings, we tested the hypothesis that directing attention away makes a memory representation vulnerable to interference from the test pattern, but only temporarily so. When given sufficient time, the robustness of VWM can be restored so that it is protected against test interference.

Adverse orienting effects on visual working memory encoding and maintenance.

Visual working memory (VWM) representations can be strengthened by pre-cues presented before, and retro-cues presented after, the memory display, providing evidence that attentional orienting plays a role in memory encoding and maintenance. It is unknown whether attentional orienting to VWM stimuli can also have adverse effects (known as inhibition of return; IOR), as has been found for perceptual-cueing tasks. If so, this would provide further evidence for common attentional orienting mechanisms for mnemonic and perceptual representations.

Location-based effects underlie feature conjunction benefits in visual working memory.

Studies of visual working memory (VWM) have reported that different features belonging to the same object (conjunctions) are better retained than the same features belonging to spatially separated objects (disjunctions). This conjunction benefit has been taken as evidence for the theory that VWM representations are object-based. However, compared to separate features, conjunctions also occupy fewer locations.

Separate capacities for storing different features in visual working memory.

Recent empirical and theoretical work suggests that visual features such as color and orientation can be stored or retrieved independently in visual working memory (VWM), even in cases when they belong to the same object. Yet it remains unclear whether different feature dimensions have their own capacity limits, or whether they compete for shared but limited resources in VWM. In 3 experiments, participants memorized arrays of dual-feature objects, for which the number of feature values was fixed on one feature dimension and was varied on the other feature dimension.

The spatial distribution of inhibition of return revisited: no difference found between manual and saccadic responses.

Inhibition of return (IOR) commonly refers to the effect of prolonged response times to targets at previously attended locations. It is a well-documented fact that IOR is not restricted to previously attended locations, but rather has a spatial gradient. Based on a myriad of manual/saccadic dissociations, many researchers now believe that there are at least two forms of IOR completely dissociable on the basis of response type.