Using response time distributions to examine top-down influences on attentional capture
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-012-0396-7
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This study investigates the mechanisms of contingent attentional capture, specifically addressing the debate between the contingent orienting hypothesis and the attentional disengagement account. The central research question concerns how and when top-down attentional settings modulate the selection of salient stimuli. The contingent orienting hypothesis posits that top-down control prevents attentional capture by irrelevant cues prior to their processing, whereas the disengagement account suggests that all salient stimuli capture attention, but top-down control subsequently disengages attention from irrelevant items. Previous research relying on mean response times (MRT) could not distinguish between these accounts because both predict similar patterns of cuing effects. To resolve this ambiguity, the author analyzed response time (RT) distributions using ex-Gaussian and vincentile analyses to separate the effects of distribution shifting (parameter $\mu$, associated with stimulus-driven processes) from distribution skewing (parameter $t$, associated with top-down processes). The study comprised three experiments involving university undergraduates performing visual search tasks. Participants were assigned to target groups (onset or color) and presented with cues that were either perceptually similar (relevant) or dissimilar (irrelevant) to the target. The experimental design manipulated cue validity (valid vs. invalid) and cue type. RT data were fitted to an ex-Gaussian function to estimate parameters $\mu$ (mean of the normal component), $\sigma$ (standard deviation), and $t$ (mean of the exponential component, representing skew). Vincentile analyses further examined how cuing effects varied across quantiles of the RT distribution. The results demonstrated that cue-target similarity significantly influenced cuing effects in MRT, confirming contingent capture. Crucially, the distribution analyses revealed that these cuing effects were driven exclusively by shifts in the $\mu$ parameter, with no significant influence on the $t$ parameter. For target-relevant cues, valid cues produced faster responses than invalid cues due to a shift in $\mu$. For target-irrelevant cues, there was no significant difference in $\mu$ between valid and invalid conditions, and no compensatory skewing effect in $t$. Vincentile analyses supported these findings, showing that cuing effects for relevant cues did not vary across quantiles, while irrelevant cues showed no consistent pattern indicative of disengagement. These findings support the contingent orienting hypothesis over the attentional disengagement account. The absence of skewing effects ($t$) for irrelevant cues indicates that top-down attentional control operates prior to attentional capture, preventing the selection of irrelevant salient stimuli rather than disengaging attention after capture. This study demonstrates that analyzing RT distributions provides critical insights into the timing and nature of top-down modulation, resolving ambiguities inherent in mean-based analyses. The results suggest that top-down settings filter stimuli before they influence the central tendency of response times, highlighting the role of early selection mechanisms in attentional control.
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-17 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-25 |
| extract | success | pdftotext | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-26 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| enrich | failed | — | — | — | 5 | 2026-07-05 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-17 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-25 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-26 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-25; verification: verified.
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- Empirical Findings: behavioral performance data