Attentional capture decreases when distractors remain visible during rapid serial visual presentations

Inukai, Tomoe; Kumada, Takatsune; Kawahara, Jun-Ichiro · 2010 · Crossref

DOI: 10.3758/app.72.4.939

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Summary

This study investigates the mechanisms of attentional capture, specifically examining whether the offset (disappearance) of a peripheral distractor enhances or reduces the diversion of attention from a central target. The research addresses a gap in understanding how transient signals interact with top-down attentional sets. While previous work established that abrupt onsets capture attention, the role of stimulus offset remained ambiguous, with conflicting theories suggesting it might either facilitate attentional disengagement or trigger additional capture. The authors hypothesized that if offset facilitates disengagement, short-duration distractors would cause less impairment than long-duration ones. Conversely, if offset interferes with re-engagement, short-duration distractors would cause greater impairment. The researchers conducted experiments using a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task. Observers identified a target letter within a stream of nontargets while peripheral distractors (pound signs) appeared. The study manipulated distractor duration (short: 43 msec; long: 172 msec) and search mode. Experiment 1A employed a "singleton detection mode," where observers searched for a uniquely colored item among homogeneous nontargets. Experiment 1B used a "feature search mode," where observers searched for a specific color among heterogeneous nontargets. Experiment 2A extended the long-duration distractor to remain visible until the end of the RSVP stream to rule out the possibility that distractor offset served as a temporal cue for target onset. The results consistently showed that identification accuracy was higher when distractors remained visible for a longer duration compared to when they disappeared shortly after onset. In Experiment 1A, accuracy was significantly lower in the short-duration condition than in the long-duration condition, regardless of whether the distractor color matched the target. Experiment 1B replicated this pattern, showing that even under feature search mode, where capture is typically contingent on task-relevant features, the offset of a distractor still impaired performance if the distractor color matched the target. Experiment 2A confirmed that the reduced capture in the long-duration condition was not due to temporal cueing, as accuracy remained higher when distractors stayed on screen until the stream ended. These findings indicate that attentional capture is driven by both stimulus onset and offset. The impairment caused by short-duration distractors suggests that the offset signal anchors attention, preventing it from disengaging and reallocating to the central target. Crucially, the study demonstrates that this offset-driven capture is susceptible to top-down attentional sets; in the feature search mode, offset interference occurred only when the distractor shared the task-relevant feature. This challenges the view that feature search is purely top-down, suggesting instead that bottom-up signals from stimulus offsets can interfere with attentional deployment even when observers are guided by specific goals.

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Topics

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• inattentional change blindness
• visual
• visual search
• attention selective divided