Proactive distractor suppression elicited by statistical regularities in visual search

Huang, Changrun; Vilotijević, Ana; Theeuwes, Jan; Donk, Mieke · 2021 · Crossref

DOI: 10.3758/s13423-021-01891-3

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Summary

This study investigates whether reduced distractor interference in visual search, resulting from statistical learning of distractor locations, is mediated by proactive suppression (occurring prior to display onset) or reactive suppression (occurring after attentional engagement). Previous research demonstrated that observers learn to ignore salient distractors that frequently appear at a specific location, but the timing of this suppression remained debated. The authors aimed to determine if this learning alters the spatial priority map before the search display appears, thereby preventing attentional capture. The experiment employed an additional singleton paradigm where participants searched for a shape singleton target while ignoring a salient color singleton distractor. The distractor appeared at a high-probability location in 65% of search trials and at low-probability locations in the remaining 35%. Crucially, one-third of trials were probe trials where participants detected the offset of a dot presented before the search display onset. This probe task measured attentional distribution prior to any visual search stimulus. The study included 60 participants after exclusions, with data analyzed using linear mixed models to assess reaction times (RTs) and accuracy. Results from the search task replicated previous findings, showing faster RTs and higher accuracy when the distractor appeared at the high-probability location compared to low-probability locations. More importantly, the probe task revealed that RTs for detecting probe offsets were significantly slower at the high-probability location than at low-probability locations. This indicates that attention was already suppressed at the high-probability location before the search display appeared. Analysis of the spatial distribution showed that suppression was maximal at the high-probability location and decreased with increasing distance from it. The suppression effect emerged after approximately 100 trials. Post-experiment awareness tests indicated that most participants were unaware of the statistical regularities, suggesting the process is implicit. The findings provide strong evidence for proactive distractor suppression elicited by statistical learning. By demonstrating that attention is deprioritized at likely distractor locations prior to display onset, the study supports the view that statistical learning modulates the initial feed-forward sweep of information processing. This challenges accounts relying solely on reactive suppression or inhibition of return, which require attentional engagement before suppression can occur. The results imply that the visual system can implicitly learn environmental regularities to optimize attentional selection by proactively adjusting the spatial priority map, thereby reducing interference from predictable irrelevant stimuli.

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• visual search