There is more to trial history than priming in attentional capture experiments

Goller, Florian; Ansorge, Ulrich · 2015 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/s13414-015-0896-3

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Summary

This study investigates whether attentional capture in a given trial is influenced by the cue–target relationship in the preceding trial, specifically examining if intertrial contingencies extend beyond simple feature priming. The research addresses a gap in contingent attentional capture theory, which posits that cues capture attention only when they match top-down search settings. While prior work established that matching cues facilitate target detection, it remained unclear whether the history of cue validity in previous trials affects capture for nonmatching cues, and whether this effect is driven by position priming or other mechanisms like conflict adaptation. The authors conducted three experiments using a visual search paradigm where participants located targets amidst distractors. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants searched for white onset targets while being cued by either matching white onset cues or nonmatching red color cues. Experiment 1 allowed random position repetitions, whereas Experiment 2 strictly prevented any repetition of cue or target positions between consecutive trials to rule out position priming. Experiment 3 reversed the search task, requiring participants to search for red color targets, thereby making red cues matching and white onset cues nonmatching. Reaction times and error rates were analyzed to determine validity effects (the difference in performance between valid and invalid cue trials) based on the validity and cue type of the preceding trial. The results demonstrated that contingent capture occurred as expected, with matching cues producing significant validity effects. Crucially, the study found that nonmatching cues also produced validity effects contingent on the preceding trial’s history. In Experiment 1, nonmatching cues facilitated target detection only if the preceding trial had been valid; if the preceding trial was invalid, the validity effect reversed. Experiment 2 replicated this finding despite the prohibition of position repetitions, confirming that the effect was not due to position priming. Instead, Experiment 2 revealed that cue-color repetition across trials influenced capture, suggesting episodic retrieval of cue features. Experiment 3 confirmed that these intertrial contingencies were specific to nonmatching cues: when searching for red targets, the nonmatching white onset cues showed validity effects dependent on prior trial validity, while the matching red cues did not. These findings indicate that trial history influences attentional capture through mechanisms beyond simple feature priming, such as conflict adaptation or strategic expectancy changes. The results suggest that participants actively suppress irrelevant cues following invalid trials, a process that affects subsequent processing of nonmatching cues. This implies that attentional control settings are dynamically adjusted based on recent trial outcomes, challenging the view that capture is solely determined by static top-down matching. The study highlights the complexity of attentional control, showing that even nonmatching distractors can capture attention depending on the immediate history of cue utility and conflict.

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• attention selective divided