Suppression of overt attentional capture by salient-but-irrelevant color singletons

Gaspelin, Nicholas; Leonard, Carly J.; Luck, Steven J. · 2016 · Attention Perception & Psychophysics

DOI: 10.3758/s13414-016-1209-1

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Summary

This study investigates the debate between stimulus-driven and goal-driven theories of visual attention, specifically testing the "signal suppression hypothesis." This hybrid theory posits that while salient stimuli automatically generate a bottom-up salience signal, top-down control mechanisms can actively suppress this signal before attention is captured. Previous research had demonstrated suppression of covert attention shifts, but it remained unclear whether humans could similarly suppress overt attentional capture, measured by eye movements. The authors aimed to determine if participants could actively suppress overt shifts of attention to salient-but-irrelevant color singletons, thereby providing direct evidence for oculomotor suppression in humans. The researchers conducted experiments using an eye-tracking adaptation of the additional singleton paradigm. Participants searched for a target shape among distractors and reported the orientation of a line within the target. In Experiment 1, the target shape varied randomly, encouraging a "singleton-detection mode" where participants looked for any unique shape. In Experiment 2, the target shape was constant for each participant, encouraging a "feature-search mode" where participants could ignore irrelevant singletons. The key metric was the landing position of the first saccade (eye movement). The authors predicted that under feature-search conditions, the probability of the first saccade landing on the irrelevant color singleton would be lower than the probability of landing on nonsalient distractors, indicating active suppression rather than just avoidance. The results confirmed the signal suppression hypothesis. In Experiment 1, where singleton detection was encouraged, first saccades were significantly more likely to land on the salient color singleton (16%) than on nonsingleton distractors (9%), demonstrating robust oculomotor capture. However, in Experiment 2, under feature-search conditions, first saccades were significantly less likely to land on the salient singleton (9.8%) than on the average nonsingleton distractor (15.5%). This "oculomotor suppression effect" indicates that attention was actively suppressed below baseline levels. Furthermore, analyses of saccadic latency showed that even the fastest saccades were suppressed, ruling out the "rapid disengagement hypothesis," which suggests that attention is initially captured but quickly rejected. The suppression effect was observed regardless of saccade speed, implying that the salience signal was inhibited before any attentional shift occurred. These findings provide strong evidence that humans can actively suppress overt attentional capture by salient-but-irrelevant stimuli. This supports the signal suppression hypothesis as a coherent framework for understanding visual attention, reconciling the automatic nature of salience with the flexibility of top-down control. The ability to suppress oculomotor capture has significant implications for models of visual search and eye movement prediction in naturalistic scenes. It suggests that cognitive control mechanisms operate early in the processing stream, preventing salient distractors from guiding eye movements even when they are highly conspicuous. This challenges purely stimulus-driven accounts and refines goal-driven theories by acknowledging the automatic generation of salience signals that must be actively managed.

Key finding

Participants actively suppressed overt attentional capture by making fewer initial saccades toward salient-but-irrelevant color singletons than toward nonsalient distractors under conditions that promoted feature search.

Methodology

lab_experiment

Sample size: 40

Provenance

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Topics

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• attention selective divided
• inattentional change blindness
• visual search