Distractor Suppression When Attention Fails: Behavioral Evidence for a Flexible Selective Attention Mechanism

Elliott, James C.; Giesbrecht, Barry · 2015 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0126203

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Summary

This study investigates whether the attentional blink (AB)—a deficit in identifying a second target (T2) presented shortly after a first target (T1)—represents a rigid, post-perceptual processing failure or a flexible attentional mechanism. While general theories of selective attention suggest it operates at multiple processing levels depending on task demands, AB theories have historically posited that attention fails only after semantic representation, implying a fixed locus of selection. Elliott and Giesbrecht tested this discrepancy by manipulating T1 task difficulty to determine if it modulates the processing of distractors presented during the AB. The researchers employed a standard rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task with 61 participants. T1 was a red letter, and T2 was a green letter presented at either lag 4 or lag 10. To manipulate T1 difficulty, six noise dots were superimposed on T1 on half of the trials. To assess distractor processing, a prime identical to T2 (but in a different color) was presented at lag 2 on half of the trials. The study also addressed a methodological flaw in prior research by calculating the prime effect and AB magnitude from independent data subsets and running a computational simulation to test for spurious correlations caused by shared variance in previous analyses. The results demonstrated that T1 difficulty significantly reduced T1 accuracy and increased the magnitude of the attentional blink. Crucially, a three-way interaction revealed that while the prime improved T2 performance at short lags under easy conditions, this benefit was attenuated under difficult T1 conditions. This indicates that distractor processing during the AB is not fixed but is suppressed when attentional resources are taxed by T1. Additionally, the study failed to replicate the previously reported correlation between distractor processing and AB magnitude when using independent variables. A computational simulation confirmed that the correlation found in earlier studies was likely spurious, resulting from mathematical overlap in how the variables were calculated rather than a genuine psychological relationship. These findings challenge the prevailing view that the attentional blink reflects a rigid, post-perceptual bottleneck. Instead, they support the conclusion that selective attention during the AB is flexible and multifaceted, operating at earlier stages of processing when task demands require it. The study also highlights a critical methodological issue in cognitive psychology, demonstrating that shared variance in difference-score calculations can produce misleading correlations in individual difference analyses. This work suggests that the locus of attentional failure is not static but adapts to the structural demands of the task.

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Topics

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• inattentional change blindness
• attention selective divided
• attention