Habituation (of attentional capture) is not what you think it is.

Turatto, Massimo · 2023 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1037/xhp0001139

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Summary

This paper argues that the reduction in attentional capture observed with repetitive salient distractors, particularly abrupt visual onsets, is best explained by habituation rather than peripheral sensory adaptation or motor fatigue. The author contends that cognitive psychologists have largely overlooked habituation, incorrectly viewing it as a non-cognitive process. Instead, the paper posits that habituation is a high-order cognitive mechanism governed by prediction-error minimization and statistical learning, allowing the brain to filter out irrelevant but salient stimuli that occur iteratively. The author reviews three classic theoretical models of habituation: the Groves and Thompson dual-process model, the Sokolov stimulus-model comparator theory, and the Wagner model. While the Groves and Thompson model attributes habituation to synaptic depression, the Sokolov and Wagner models emphasize cognitive processes such as memory, expectation, and prediction. Sokolov’s model suggests that attention is captured only when a stimulus violates an expected sensory input based on past stimulation history. Wagner’s model proposes that habituation depends on how strongly a stimulus is primed in short-term memory and forms associations with its context in long-term memory. The paper applies these frameworks to visual attention, specifically focusing on the exogenous orienting response to irrelevant distractors. Evidence is presented to demonstrate that habituation of attentional capture exhibits key characteristics of learning, including spontaneous recovery, context specificity, and dependence on stimulus probability. Crucially, the author cites findings showing that habituation is controlled by the distractor rate (probability) rather than its temporal frequency. High-rate distractors, which are more expected, result in stronger habituation than low-rate distractors, even when temporal frequencies are matched. This contradicts the Groves and Thompson model, which predicts habituation should depend solely on the number of stimulations. Additionally, the paper highlights that habituation is context-specific; filtering of distractors remains effective only within the specific spatial or temporal context in which learning occurred. For instance, capture recovers if a distractor appears at an unexpected time or if the contextual configuration changes, indicating that the brain uses contextual cues to generate predictions about distractor occurrence. The significance of this work lies in redefining habituation as a central cognitive mechanism for controlling stimulus-driven attention. By framing habituation through the lens of prediction error and statistical learning, the paper bridges the gap between neurobiological learning theories and cognitive attention research. It suggests that the brain actively learns to ignore irrelevant repetitive events to prevent dangerous misallocations of attention. This perspective implies that researchers should prioritize habituation as a primary mechanism for distractor rejection, particularly for onset stimuli, and recognize its reliance on high-level cognitive processes like expectation and context-dependent memory.

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• attention selective divided