Combined Electrophysiological and Behavioral Evidence for the Suppression of Salient Distractors

Gaspelin, Nicholas; Luck, Steven J. · 2018 · Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01279

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Summary

This study addresses the long-standing debate in visual attention regarding how salient-but-irrelevant stimuli are processed. While stimulus-driven theories propose that salient items automatically capture attention, and goal-driven theories suggest attention is guided solely by task-relevant features, recent evidence supports a hybrid "signal suppression" model. This model posits that salient stimuli initially attract attention but can be actively inhibited by top-down mechanisms. The authors aimed to link neural evidence for this suppression, specifically the distractor positivity (PD) event-related potential (ERP) component, with direct behavioral evidence of inhibition. Previous studies had shown that salient distractors failing to capture attention elicit a PD, and behavioral tasks indicated reduced processing at distractor locations, but no study had directly demonstrated that these two measures reflect the same underlying mechanism. The research employed a capture-probe paradigm combined with electroencephalography (EEG) recording. Participants performed a visual search task where they identified a specific shape target among heterogeneous distractors, some of which were color singletons (salient distractors). On a subset of trials, letters briefly appeared at each location (probe trials), and participants reported as many letters as possible. The probability of reporting a letter at the singleton location relative to non-singleton locations served as a behavioral index of suppression. Simultaneously, ERPs were recorded to measure the N2pc (attentional allocation) and PD (suppression) components. Experiment 1 tested if the conditions eliciting a PD also produced behavioral probe suppression. Experiment 2 examined whether the magnitude of the PD covaried with the magnitude of behavioral suppression across participants. Experiment 3 ruled out the alternative explanation that the PD-like activity was merely an automatic salience detection signal (Ppc). The results confirmed that when a salient distractor elicited a PD component, processing at that location was suppressed below baseline levels, as evidenced by lower probe report accuracy compared to non-singleton distractors. Crucially, the magnitude of the behavioral suppression effect and the amplitude of the PD component were positively correlated across participants. This finding provides a direct link between the neural signature of suppression and its behavioral consequence. The study concludes that the PD component is a valid neural index of the active inhibition of salient distractors. This connection allows researchers to use the PD to investigate the timing and neural substrates of the behaviorally observed suppression, offering a robust framework for understanding how top-down control overrides bottom-up salience.

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• attention selective divided