Target-uncertainty effects in attentional capture: Color-singleton set or multiple attentional control settings?

Folk, Charles L.; Anderson, Brian A. · 2010 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/pbr.17.3.421

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Summary

This study investigates the specificity of top-down attentional control settings in the context of contingent attentional capture (CAC). Previous research indicated that when a target’s defining feature (e.g., color) is known with certainty, observers adopt a specific control setting for that feature, causing only matching distractors to capture attention. However, when the target feature is uncertain (e.g., unpredictably red or green), observers appear to adopt a general control setting for "color singletons," causing any colored distractor to capture attention. An alternative hypothesis suggests that this general capture reflects the simultaneous maintenance of multiple specific control settings (e.g., separate sets for red and green) rather than a broad singleton set. The authors aimed to distinguish between these two accounts by testing whether attentional capture occurs for cue colors that do not match any possible target color. To address this question, the researchers conducted two experiments using a modified spatial cuing paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants searched for targets that were unpredictably red or green. Spatial cues were presented in red, green, or blue. If participants maintained simultaneous specific settings for red and green, only red and green cues should capture attention; if they adopted a general singleton set, all three cue colors should capture attention. Experiment 2 controlled for the possibility that blue cues captured attention due to high salience (being the only non-target color). In this experiment, participants were certain of the target color (either always red or always green), allowing them to adopt a specific control setting. The same three cue colors (red, green, blue) were used. The results from Experiment 1 showed that red, green, and blue cues all produced significant attentional capture, evidenced by cue validity effects in response times. This finding contradicted the multiple-specific-settings hypothesis, as blue cues did not match either potential target color. Experiment 2 confirmed that when target color was certain, only cues matching the specific target color produced capture; blue cues failed to capture attention. This demonstrated that blue cues were not inherently salient enough to override a specific top-down set. Consequently, the capture by blue cues in Experiment 1 must have resulted from a general control setting for color singletons. The study concludes that the specificity of attentional control settings is flexible and varies adaptively with task demands. Under conditions of target uncertainty, the attentional system adopts a broad control setting for feature singletons in general, rather than maintaining multiple specific settings for each possible target feature. This finding supports the view that attentional control can be configured to respond to general stimulus properties when specific features are unpredictable, distinguishing this mechanism from the capacity to maintain multiple specific settings simultaneously, which may require different task constraints or greater cognitive effort.

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Topics

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• attention selective divided
• inattentional change blindness