Visual Selection: Usually Fast and Automatic; Seldom Slow and Volitional

On the reliability of value-modulated attentional capture: An online replication and multiverse analysis

Stimuli predicting rewards are more likely to capture attention, even when they are not relevant to our current goals. Individual differences in value-modulated attentional capture (VMAC) have been associated with various psychopathological conditions in the scientific literature. However, the claim that this attentional bias can predict individual differences requires further exploration of the psychometric properties of the most common experimental paradigms. The current study replicated the VMAC effect in a large online sample (N = 182) and investigated the internal consistency, with a design that allowed us to measure the effect during learning (rewarded phase) and after acquisition, once feedback was omitted (unrewarded phase). Through the rewarded phase there was gradual increase of the VMAC effect, which did not decline significantly throughout the unrewarded phase. Furthermore, we conducted a reliability multiverse analysis for 288 different data preprocessing specifications across both phases. Specifications including more blocks in the analysis led to better reliability estimates in both phases, while specifications that removed more outliers also improved reliability, suggesting that specifications with more, but less noisy, trials led to better reliability estimates. Nevertheless, in most instances, especially those considering fewer blocks of trials, reliability estimates fell below the minimum recommended thresholds for research on individual differences. Given the present results, we encourage researchers working on VMAC to take into account reliability when designing studies aimed at capturing individual differences and provide recommendations to improve methodological practices.

Working memory load does not interfere with distractor suppression in the additional singleton task

Over the last decade, the additional singleton task has been widely used to study visual statistical learning. In this paradigm, participants are instructed to find a target while ignoring a series of distractors. In some trials, a salient singleton distractor is added to the search display, making the task more difficult. However, if the singleton appears more frequently in one particular location of the display, participants eventually learn to suppress attention towards this location. It has been suggested that this type of learning is probably implicit and independent of working memory (WM) resources. To our knowledge, only one study has explored the impact of WM in suppression effect (Gao & Theeuwes, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27, 96-104, 2020). However, there are reasons to suspect that the amount and type of WM load used in that study may have been suboptimal to detect any effects on distractor suppression. The aim of the present study was to explore the impact of WM load on distractor suppression addressing these issues. Contrary to our expectations, our results confirm that this type of learning is indeed highly resilient even to strong manipulations of WM load.

Influence of reinforcement learning on the inhibitory control of Internet gaming disorder

Reward processing dysfunction and inhibition control deficiency have been observed in Internet gaming disorder (IGD). However, it is still unclear whether the previous reinforcement learning depends on reward/punishment feedback influences on the cognitive inhibitory control of IGD. This study compared the differences between an IGD group and healthy people without game experiences in the probability selection task and the subsequent stop signal task by the method of behavioral experiments, in order to explore whether the reward learning ability is impaired in the IGD group. We also discuss the influence of previous reward learning on subsequent inhibition control. The results showed that (1) during the reward learning phase, the IGD group's accuracy was significantly lower than that of the control group; (2) compared with the control group, the IGD group's reaction times were longer in the transfer phase; (3) for no-go trials of the inhibitory control phase after reward learning, the accuracy of the reward-related stimulation in the IGD group was lower than that of punishment-related or neutral stimulation, but there was no significant difference among the three conditions in the control group. These findings indicated that the reinforcement learning ability of the IGD group was impaired, which further caused the abnormal response to reinforcement stimuli.

Location- and feature-based selection histories make independent, qualitatively distinct contributions to urgent visuomotor performance

Attention mechanisms that guide visuomotor behaviors are classified into three broad types according to their reliance on stimulus salience, current goals, and selection histories (i.e., recent experience with events of many sorts). These forms of attentional control are clearly distinct and multifaceted, but what is largely unresolved is how they interact dynamically to determine impending visuomotor choices. To investigate this, we trained two macaque monkeys to perform an urgent version of an oddball search task in which a red target appears among three green distracters, or vice versa. By imposing urgency, performance can be tracked continuously as it transitions from uninformed guesses to informed choices, and this, in turn, permits assessment of attentional control as a function of time. We found that the probability of making a correct choice was strongly modulated by the histories of preceding target colors and target locations. Crucially, although both effects were gated by success (or reward), the two variables played dynamically distinct roles: whereas location history promoted an early motor bias, color history modulated the later perceptual evaluation. Furthermore, target color and location influenced performance independently of each other. The results show that, when combined, selection histories can give rise to enormous swings in visuomotor performance even in simple tasks with highly discriminable stimuli.

Trichotomy revisited: A monolithic theory of attentional control

The control of attention was long held to reflect the influence of two competing mechanisms of assigning priority, one goal-directed and the other stimulus-driven. Learning-dependent influences on the control of attention that could not be attributed to either of those two established mechanisms of control gave rise to the concept of selection history and a corresponding third mechanism of attentional control. The trichotomy framework that ensued has come to dominate theories of attentional control over the past decade, replacing the historical dichotomy. In this theoretical review, I readily affirm that distinctions between the influence of goals, salience, and selection history are substantive and meaningful, and that abandoning the dichotomy between goal-directed and stimulus-driven mechanisms of control was appropriate. I do, however, question whether a theoretical trichotomy is the right answer to the problem posed by selection history. If we reframe the influence of goals and selection history as different flavors of memory-dependent modulations of attentional priority and if we characterize the influence of salience as a consequence of insufficient competition from such memory-dependent sources of priority, it is possible to account for a wide range of attention-related phenomena with only one mechanism of control. The monolithic framework for the control of attention that I propose offers several concrete advantages over a trichotomy framework, which I explore here.

Humans reconfigure target and distractor processing to address distinct task demands

When faced with distraction, we can focus more on goal-relevant information (targets) or focus less on goal-conflicting information (distractors). How people use cognitive control to distribute attention across targets and distractors remains unclear. We address this question by developing a novel Parametric Attentional Control Task that can "tag" participants' sensitivity to target and distractor information. We use these precise measures of attention to develop a novel process model that can explain how participants control attention toward targets and distractors. Across three experiments, we find that participants met the demands of this task by independently controlling their processing of target and distractor information, exhibiting distinct adaptations to manipulations of incentives and conflict. Whereas incentives preferentially led to target enhancement, conflict in the previous trial preferentially led to distractor suppression. These distinct drivers of control altered sensitivity to targets and distractors early in the trial, promptly followed by reactive reconfiguration toward task-appropriate feature sensitivity. To provide a process-level account of these empirical findings, we develop a novel neural network model of evidence accumulation with attractor dynamics over feature weights that reconfigure target and distractor processing. These results provide a computational account of control reconfiguration that provides new insights into how multivariate attentional signals are optimized to achieve task goals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Adapting attentional control settings in a shape-changing environment

In rich visual environments, humans have to adjust their attentional control settings in various ways, depending on the task. Especially if the environment changes dynamically, it remains unclear how observers adapt to these changes. In two experiments (online and lab-based versions of the same task), we investigated how observers adapt their target choices while searching for color singletons among shape distractor contexts that changed over trials. The two equally colored targets had shapes that differed from each other and matched a varying number of distractors. Participants were free to select either target. The results show that participants adjusted target choices to the shape ratio of distractors: even though the task could be finished by focusing on color only, participants showed a tendency to choose targets matching with fewer distractors in shape. The time course of this adaptation showed that the regularities in the changing environment were taken into account. A Bayesian modeling approach was used to provide a fine-grained picture of how observers adapted their behavior to the changing shape ratio with three parameters: the strength of adaptation, its delay relative to the objective distractor shape ratio, and a general bias toward specific shapes. Overall, our findings highlight that systematic changes in shape, even when it is not a target-defining feature, influence how searchers adjust their attentional control settings. Furthermore, our comparison between lab-based and online assessments with this paradigm suggests that shape is a good choice as a feature dimension in adaptive choice online experiments.

Attentional blur and blink: Effects of adaptive attentional scaling on visual awareness

Attentional scaling is a crucial mechanism that enables us to flexibly allocate our attention to larger or smaller regions in the visual field. Although previous studies have demonstrated the critical role of attentional scaling in visual processing, its impact on modulating visual awareness is not yet fully understood. This study investigates the adaptive control of attentional scaling and its influence on visual awareness in an attentional blink paradigm. Participants were required to attend to the first target's location, which was manipulated either session-wise, trial-wise, or such that it could be learned across a block of trials. Discrete, all-or-none, awareness was expected when attention was allocated to a narrow area, while gradual awareness was expected when attention was allocated to a larger area. We used mixture modeling to assess second target awareness across these different attentional scales. The results revealed that participants could adaptively control their attentional scale both across stable sessions, and through (implicit) statistical learning in blocks of successive trials. This produced gradual perceptual awareness when the participants adopted a broad attentional scale, causing an attentional "blur". However, trial-wise cues did not allow for attentional scaling, resulting in more discrete target perception overall, and an attentional "blink". We conclude that the attentional scale is to some extent under adaptive control during the attentional blink/blur, where it can produce qualitatively different modes of perceptual awareness.

The Electrophysiological Markers of Statistically Learned Attentional Enhancement: Evidence for a Saliency-based Mechanism

It is well established that attention can be sharpened through the process of statistical learning (e.g., visual search becomes faster when targets appear at high-relative-to-low probability locations). Although this process of statistically learned attentional enhancement differs behaviorally from the well-studied top-down and bottom-up forms of attention, relatively little work has been done to characterize the electrophysiological correlates of statistically learned attentional enhancement. It thus remains unclear whether statistically learned enhancement recruits any of the same cognitive mechanisms as top-down or bottom-up attention. In the current study, EEG data were collected while participants searched for an ambiguous unique shape in a visual array (the additional singleton task). Unbeknownst to the participants, targets appeared more frequently in one location in space (probability cuing). Encephalographic data were then analyzed in two phases: an anticipatory phase and a reactive phase. In the anticipatory phase preceding search stimuli onset, alpha lateralization as well as the Anterior Directing Attention Negativity and Late Directing Attention Positivity components-signs of preparatory attention known to characterize top-down enhancement-were tested. In the reactive phase, the N2pc component-a well-studied marker of target processing-was examined following stimuli onset. Our results showed that statistically learned attentional enhancement is not characterized by any of the well-known anticipatory markers of top-down attention; yet targets at high probability locations did reliably evoke larger N2pc amplitudes, a finding that is associated with bottom-up attention and saliency. Overall, our findings are consistent with the notion that statistically learned attentional enhancement increases the perceptual salience of items appearing at high-probability locations relative to low-probability locations.

Relative contributions of oculomotor capture and disengagement to distractor-related dwell times in visual search

In visual search, attention is reliably captured by salient distractors and must be actively disengaged from them to reach the target. In such attentional capture paradigms, dwell time is measured on distractors that appear in the periphery (e.g., on a random location on a circle). Distractor-related dwell time is typically thought to be largely due to stimulus-driven processes related to oculomotor capture dynamics. However, the extent to which oculomotor capture and oculomotor disengagement contribute to distractor dwell time has not been known because standard attentional capture paradigms cannot decouple these processes. In the present study, we used a novel paradigm combining classical attentional capture trials and delayed disengagement trials. We measured eye movements to dissociate the capture and disengagement mechanisms underlying distractor dwell time. We found that only two-thirds of distractor dwell time (~ 52 ms) can be explained by oculomotor capture, while one-third is explained by oculomotor disengagement (~ 18 ms), which has been neglected or underestimated in previous studies. Thus, oculomotor disengagement (goal-directed) processes play a more significant role in distractor dwell times than previously thought.

Pinging the brain to reveal the hidden attentional priority map using encephalography

Attention has been usefully thought of as organized in priority maps - putative maps of space where attentional priority is weighted across spatial regions in a winner-take-all competition for attentional deployment. Recent work has highlighted the influence of past experiences on the weighting of spatial priority - called selection history. Aside from being distinct from more well-studied, top-down forms of attentional enhancement, little is known about the neural substrates of history-mediated attentional priority. Using a task known to induce statistical learning of target distributions, in an EEG study we demonstrate that this otherwise invisible, latent attentional priority map can be visualized during the intertrial period using a 'pinging' technique in conjunction with multivariate pattern analyses. Our findings not only offer a method of visualizing the history-mediated attentional priority map, but also shed light on the underlying mechanisms allowing our past experiences to influence future behavior.

The same phase creates a unique visual rhythm unifying moving elements in time

Attention can be selectively tuned to particular features at different spatial locations or objects. The deployment of attention can be guided by properties, such as color, orientation, and so forth, as guiding features. What might be such guiding features for visual stimuli under dynamic rhythmic conditions? We asked specifically what might be the parameters that attract attention when perceiving a visual rhythm. We used a visual search paradigm, in which a dynamic search display consisted of vertically "bouncing balls" with regular rhythms. The search target was defined by a unique visual rhythm (i.e., with either a shorter or longer period) among rhythmic distractors sharing an identical period. We modulated amplitudes and phases of the distractor balls systematically. The results showed a crucial factor of the phase, not the amplitude. If the phase is violated, the target suddenly "pops out" as an "oddball," showing an efficient parallel search. The findings indicate in general the essential role of the phase in conjunction with amplitude and period for visual rhythm perception. Furthermore, a higher saliency of moving objects with a higher frequency component has also been disclosed.

The Attentional Window, Search Difficulty and Search Modes: A Reply to Commentaries on Theeuwes (2023)

With great pleasure I studied the commentaries of my esteemed colleagues to my opinion paper "The Attentional Capture Debate: When Can We avoid Salient Distractors and When Not?" (Theeuwes, 2023). I thought the comments were to-the-point and provocative and I believe that these kinds of exchanges will help the field to move forward in this debate. I discuss the most pressing concerns in separate sections where I have grouped commonly raised issues.

The Attentional Capture Debate: When Can We Avoid Salient Distractors and When Not?

There has been a long-standing debate concerning whether we are able to resist attention capture by salient distractors. The so-called "signal suppression hypothesis" of Gaspelin and Luck (2018) claimed to have resolved this debate. According to this view, salient stimuli "naturally attempt to capture attention", yet attention capture may be prevented by a top-down inhibitory mechanism. The current paper describes the conditions in which attention capture by salient distractors can be avoided. Capture by salient items can be avoided when the target is non-salient and therefore difficult to find. Because fine discrimination is needed, a small attentional window is adapted resulting in serial (or partly serial) search. Salient signals outside the focused attentional window do not capture attention anymore not because they are suppressed but because they are ignored. We argue that in studies that have provided evidence for signal suppression, search was likely serial or at least partly serial. When the target is salient, search will be conducted in parallel, and in those cases the salient singleton cannot be ignored nor suppressed but instead will capture attention. We argue that the "signal suppression" account (Gaspelin & Luck, 2018) that seeks to explain resistance to attentional capture has many parallels to classic visual search models such as the "feature integration theory" (Treisman & Gelade, 1980), "feature inhibition" account (Treisman & Sato, 1990), and "guided search" (Wolfe et al, 1989); all models that explain how the serial deployment of attention is guided by the output of earlier parallel processes.

Control of bottom-up attention in scene cognition contributes to visual working memory performance

Several studies have investigated the relationship between working memory and attention. However, most of the relevant studies so far investigated top-down attention; only a few have examined possible interactions between bottom-up attention and visual working memory. In the present study, we focused on the visual saliency of different parts of pictures as an index of the degree to which one's bottom-up attention can be drawn towards each of them. We administered the Picture Span Test (PST) to investigate whether salient parts of pictures can influence the performance of visual working memory. The task required participants to judge the semantic congruency of objects in pictures and remember specific parts of pictures. In Experiment 1, we calculated a saliency map for the PST stimuli and found that salient but task-irrelevant parts of pictures could evoke intrusion errors. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that longer gazing time at target areas results in a higher probability of making correct recognition. In addition, frequent gaze fixation and high normalized scan-path saliency values in task-irrelevant areas were associated with intrusion errors. These results suggest that visual information processed by bottom-up attention may affect working memory.

Individual differences in selective attention and engagement shape students’ learning from visual cues and instructor presence during online lessons

Although some researchers recommend minimizing extraneous visual information in multimedia lessons, others have demonstrated that features such as visual cues and instructor videos can enhance learning. However, variability in selective attention skills may influence students’ ability to benefit from these additional features. This study investigated links between college students’ selective attention skills and their learning from video lessons that varied in the use of visual cues and the instructor video. Learning outcomes depended on both the visual features available and students’ effort and selective attention skills. Among students who reported increased effort during the lessons, those with more efficient selective attention benefited most when a single additional feature (i.e., either visual cues or the instructor video) was used. All students, regardless of attention skills, benefited when both visual cues and the instructor were combined. These findings suggest that learning during multimedia lessons may depend on the visual features of the lessons and the student’s effort and attention skills.

No evidence for spatial suppression due to across-trial distractor learning in visual search

Previous studies have shown that during visual search, participants are able to implicitly learn across-trial regularities regarding target locations and use these to improve search performance. The present study asks whether such across-trial visual statistical learning also extends to the location of salient distractors. In Experiments 1 and 2, distractor regularities were paired so that a specific distractor location was 100% predictive of another specific distractor location on the next trial. Unlike previous findings that employed target regularities, the current results show no difference in search times between predictable and unpredictable trials. In Experiments 3-5 the distractor location was presented in a structured order (a sequence) for one group of participants, while it was presented randomly for the other group. Again, there was no learning effect of the across-trial regularities regarding the salient distractor locations. Across five experiments, we demonstrated that participants were unable to exploit across-trial spatial regularities regarding the salient distractors. These findings point to important boundary conditions for the modulation of visual attention by statistical regularities and they highlight the need to differentiate between different types of statistical regularities.

Perceptual Functioning

Perceptual disorders are not part of the diagnosis criteria for schizophrenia. Yet, a considerable amount of work has been conducted, especially on visual perception abnormalities, and there is little doubt that visual perception is altered in patients. There are several reasons why such perturbations are of interest in this pathology. They are observed during the prodromal phase of psychosis, they are related to the pathophysiology (clinical disorganization, disorders of the sense of self), and they are associated with neuronal connectivity disorders. Perturbations occur at different levels of processing and likely affect how patients interact and adapt to their surroundings. The literature has become very large, and here we try to summarize different models that have guided the exploration of perception in patients. We also illustrate several lines of research by showing how perception has been investigated and by discussing the interpretation of the results. In addition to discussing domains such as contrast sensitivity, masking, and visual grouping, we develop more recent fields like processing at the level of the retina, and the timing of perception.

Attention and platypuses

This perspective piece discusses a set of attentional phenomena that are not easily accommodated within current theories of attentional selection. We call these phenomena attentional platypuses, as they allude to an observation that within biological taxonomies the platypus does not fit into either mammal or bird categories. Similarly, attentional phenomena that do not fit neatly within current attentional models suggest that current models are in need of a revision. We list a few instances of the "attentional platypuses" and then offer a new approach, that we term dynamically weighted prioritization, stipulating that multiple factors impinge onto the attentional priority map, each with a corresponding weight. The interaction between factors and their corresponding weights determines the current state of the priority map which subsequently constrains/guides attentional allocation. We propose that this new approach should be considered as a supplement to existing models of attention, especially those that emphasize categorical organizations. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Attention Psychology > Perception and Psychophysics Neuroscience > Cognition.

Learning to suppress a distractor may not be unconscious

The additional singleton task has become a popular paradigm to explore visual statistical learning and selective attention. In this task, participants are instructed to find a different-shaped target among a series of distractors as fast as possible. In some trials, the search display includes a singleton distractor with a different color, making search more difficult. This singleton distractor appears more often in one location than in the remaining locations. The typical results of these experiments show that participants learn to ignore the area of the screen that is more likely to contain the singleton distractor. It is often claimed that this learning takes place unconsciously, because at the end of the experiment participants seem to be unable to identify the location where the singleton distractor appeared most frequently during the task. In the present study, we tested participants’ awareness in three high-powered experiments using alternative measures. Contrary to previous studies, the results show clear evidence of explicit knowledge about which area of the display was more likely to contain the singleton distractor, suggesting that this type of learning might not be unconscious.

This is a test: Oculomotor capture when the experiment keeps score

Physically salient stimuli are difficult to ignore, frequently eliciting fixations even when they are known to be task-irrelevant. A recent study demonstrated that distractor fixation-contingent auditory feedback was highly effective in reducing the frequency of fixations on such stimuli. The present study explores more specifically what it is about feedback that makes it effective in curbing oculomotor behavior. In one experiment, we removed the immediacy of the feedback by informing participants after each trial via textual feedback if they had fixated the distractor. A comparable reduction in the frequency of oculomotor capture was observed. In a second experiment, we only provided summary feedback concerning the frequency of oculomotor capture after each block of trials. Not only were the benefits of feedback again robustly comparable, but a benefit was observed even in the first block before any feedback had actually been presented. Simply knowing that the frequency of distractor fixations was being monitored was sufficient to substantially reduce the frequency of oculomotor capture. Interestingly, trial-level feedback predominantly reduced the frequency of capture by slowing oculomotor responses, reflecting a speed-accuracy tradeoff, whereas block-wise feedback resulted in a reduction in the frequency of capture with saccadic reaction time equated, reflecting a bona fide improvement in task performance. Our findings have implications for our understanding of the role of motivation, strategy, and selection history in oculomotor control.

What to expect where and when: how statistical learning drives visual selection

While the visual environment contains massive amounts of information, we should not and cannot pay attention to all events. Instead, we need to direct attention to those events that have proven to be important in the past and suppress those that were distracting and irrelevant. Experiences molded through a learning process enable us to extract and adapt to the statistical regularities in the world. While previous studies have shown that visual statistical learning (VSL) is critical for representing higher order units of perception, here we review the role of VSL in attentional selection. Evidence suggests that through VSL, attentional priority settings are optimally adjusted to regularities in the environment, without intention and without conscious awareness.

Spatial enhancement due to statistical learning tracks the estimated spatial probability

It is well known that attentional selection is sensitive to the regularities presented in the display. In the current study we employed the additional singleton paradigm and systematically manipulated the probability that the target would be presented in one particular location within the display (probabilities of 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, and 90%). The results showed the higher the target probability, the larger the performance benefit for high- relative to low-probability locations both when a distractor was present and when it was absent. We also showed that when the difference between high- and low-probability conditions was relatively small (30%) participants were not able to learn the contingencies. The distractor presented at a high-probability target location caused more interference than when presented at a low-probability target location. Overall, the results suggest that attentional biases are optimized to the regularities presented in the display tracking the experienced probabilities of the locations that were most likely to contain a target. We argue that this effect is not strategic in nature nor the result of repetition priming. Instead, we assume that through statistical learning the weights within the spatial priority map are adjusted optimally, generating the efficient selection priorities.

Learning to suppress a location does not depend on knowing which location

The present study investigated whether explicit knowledge and awareness regarding the regularities present in the display affects statistical learning (SL) in visual search. Participants performed the additional singleton paradigm in which a salient distractor was presented much more often in one location than in all other locations. Previous studies have shown that participants learn this regularity as the location that is most likely to contain a distractor becomes suppressed relative to all other locations. In the current study, after each trial, participants had to either indicate the location of the distractor or the location of the target. Those participants that reported the distractor location, were very much aware of the regularity present in the display. However, participants that reported the target location were basically unaware of the regularity regarding the distractor. The results showed no difference between these groups in the amount of suppression of the high-probability location. This indicates that regardless of whether participants had explicit knowledge or not, the suppression was basically the same. We conclude that explicit knowledge and awareness does not contribute to learning to suppress a location. This conclusion is consistent with the notion that statistical learning is automatic, operating without conscious effort or awareness.

Be there on time: Spatial-temporal regularities guide young children's attention in dynamic environments

Children's ability to benefit from spatiotemporal regularities to detect goal-relevant targets was tested in a dynamic, extended context. Young adults and children (from a low-deprivation area school in the United Kingdom; N = 80; 5-6 years; 39 female; ethics approval did not permit individual-level race/ethnicity surveying) completed a dynamic visual-search task. Targets and distractors faded in and out of a display over seconds. Half of the targets appeared at predictable times and locations. Search performance in children was poorer overall. Nevertheless, they benefitted equivalently from spatiotemporal regularities, detecting more predictable than unpredictable targets. Children's benefits from predictions correlated positively with their attention. The study brings ecological validity to the study of attentional guidance in children, revealing striking behavioral benefits of dynamic experience-based predictions.

Is Statistical Learning of a Salient Distractor's Color Implicit, Inflexible and Distinct From Inter-Trial Priming?

Being able to overcome distraction by salient distractors is critical in order to allocate our attention efficiently. Previous research showed that observers can learn to ignore salient distractors endowed with some regularity, such as a high-probability location or feature - a phenomenon known as distractor statistical learning. Unlike goal-directed attentional guidance, the bias induced by statistical learning is thought to be implicit, long-lasting and inflexible. We tested these claims with regard to statistical learning of distractor color in a high-power (N = 160) pre-registered experiment. Participants searched for a known-shape singleton target and a color singleton distractor, when present, appeared most often in one color during the learning phase, but equally often in all possible colors during the extinction phase. We used a sensitive measure of participants' awareness of the probability manipulation. The awareness test was administered after the extinction phase for one group, and after the leaning phase for another group - which was informed that the probability imbalance would be discontinued in the upcoming extinction phase. Participants learned to suppress the high-probability distractor color very fast, an effect partly due to intertrial priming. Crucially, there was only little evidence that the bias survived during extinction. Awareness of the manipulation was associated with reduced color suppression, suggesting that the bias was implicit. Finally, results showed that the awareness test was more sensitive when administered early vs. late. We conclude that learnt color suppression is an implicit bias that emerges and decays rapidly, and discuss the methodological implications of our findings.

Is probabilistic cuing of visual search an inflexible attentional habit? A meta-analytic review

In studies on probabilistic cuing of visual search, participants search for a target among several distractors and report some feature of the target. In a biased stage the target appears more frequently in one specific area of the search display. Eventually, participants become faster at finding the target in that rich region compared to the sparse region. In some experiments, this stage is followed by an unbiased stage, where the target is evenly located across all regions of the display. Despite this change in the spatial distribution of targets, search speed usually remains faster when the target is located in the previously rich region. The persistence of the bias even when it is no longer advantageous has been taken as evidence that this phenomenon is an attentional habit. The aim of this meta-analysis was to test whether the magnitude of probabilistic cuing decreases from the biased to the unbiased stage. A meta-analysis of 42 studies confirmed that probabilistic cuing during the unbiased stage was roughly half the size of cuing during the biased stage, and this decrease persisted even after correcting for publication bias. Thus, the evidence supporting the claim that probabilistic cuing is an attentional habit might not be as compelling as previously thought.

The past, present, and future of selection history

The last ten years of attention research have witnessed a revolution, replacing a theoretical dichotomy (top-down vs. bottom-up control) with a trichotomy (biased by current goals, physical salience, and selection history). This third new mechanism of attentional control, selection history, is multifaceted. Some aspects of selection history must be learned over time whereas others reflect much more transient influences. A variety of different learning experiences can shape the attention system, including reward, aversive outcomes, past experience searching for a target, target‒non-target relations, and more. In this review, we provide an overview of the historical forces that led to the proposal of selection history as a distinct mechanism of attentional control. We then propose a formal definition of selection history, with concrete criteria, and identify different components of experience-driven attention that fit within this definition. The bulk of the review is devoted to exploring how these different components relate to one another. We conclude by proposing an integrative account of selection history centered on underlying themes that emerge from our review.

Does feature intertrial priming guide attention? The jury is still out

Our search performance is strongly influenced by our past experience. In the lab, this influence has been demonstrated by investigating a variety of phenomena, including intertrial priming, statistical learning, and reward history, and collectively referred to as selection history. The resulting findings have led researchers to claim that selection history guides attention, thereby challenging the prevailing dichotomy, according to which top-down and bottom-up factors alone determine attentional priority. Here, we re-examine this claim with regard to one selection-history phenomenon, feature intertrial priming (aka priming of pop-out). We evaluate the evidence that specifically pertains to the role of feature intertrial priming in attentional guidance, rather than in later selective processes occurring after the target is found. We distinguish between the main experimental rationales, while considering the extent to which feature intertrial priming, as studied through different protocols, shares characteristics of top-down attention. We show that there is strong evidence that feature intertrial priming guides attention when the experimental protocol departs from the canonical paradigm and encourages observers to maintain the critical feature in visual working memory or to form expectations about the upcoming target. By contrast, the current evidence regarding the standard feature intertrial priming phenomenon is inconclusive. We propose directions for future research and suggest that applying the methodology used here in order to re-evaluate of the role of other selection history phenomena in attentional guidance should clarify the mechanisms underlying the strong impact of past experience on visual search performance.

Preparatory Control Against Distraction Is Not Feature-Based

Salient-but-irrelevant stimuli (distractors) co-occurring with search targets can capture attention against the observer's will. Recently, evidence has accumulated that preparatory control can prevent this misguidance of spatial attention in predictable situations. However, the underlying mechanisms have remained elusive. Most pertinent theories assume that attention is guided by specific features. This widespread theoretical claim provides several strong predictions with regard to distractor handling that are disconfirmed here: Employing electrophysiological markers of covert attentional dynamics, in three experiments, we show that distractors standing out by a feature that is categorically different from the target consistently captures attention. However, equally salient distractors standing out in a different feature dimension are effectively down-weighted, even if unpredictably swapping their defining feature with the target. This shows that preparing for a distractor's feature is neither necessary nor sufficient for successful avoidance of attentional capture. Rather, capture is prevented by preparing for the distractor's feature dimension.

Local and global context repetitions in contextual cueing

In contextual cueing tasks, participants can use a repeating local context to learn to detect the target, yet most contextual cueing studies have relied on repeating global context properties. We examined whether observers can use local context repetitions in a similar manner as they use global context repetitions. In addition, we examined how reward-predicting context features modulate the use of local and global contexts. Participants searched through contexts in which either the entire context configuration or only a local context around the target repeated, intermixed with novel contexts. Half of the context items appeared in a color signaling either low or high reward. We found that local context repetitions led to comparable benefits in response times and fixation count as global context repetitions did. Surprisingly, reward magnitude did not affect performance in local nor in global contexts. The results suggest that a local chunk of distractors can be used for context learning and attention guidance in a similar manner as the global context configuration. We suggest that the proportion of repeated and novel context trials is crucial for context learning and that our combination of locally and globally repeating contexts provided an environment that facilitated learning in both context types because it allowed predicting the target location from the context in most of the trials.

Landmark cueing and exogenous (onset) cueing: How are they related?

Attentional consequences of (i) mere onset of a peripheral visual cue, and (ii)encoding spatially predictive, landmark features of that cue were studied in two experiments. Target location was associated with landmark features of peripheral cues. Cue onset elicited both attention capture (Experiment Two) and inhibition of return (Experiment One) effects. In both experiments, attentional effects of landmark features of the cues were observed early in practice, and diminished with time on task. Contrary to hypotheses based on models that liken attention to a moving spotlight or zoom lens, in both experiments attentional effects of landmark features were confined to the location where the cue was presented. To explain this, we enlist the concept of attentional priority maps, and propose that visual encoding causes attentional priorities to be updated via alternative input routes and mechanisms. We suggest that onset cueing effects are associated with retinotectal 'spatial indexing', which registers the location, but not the attributes of new stimuli, while landmark cueing effects are associated with interaction between spatial indexing and dorsal stream visual processing of attentionally relevant landmark features.

Attentional capture in multiple object tracking

Attentional processes are generally assumed to be involved in multiple object tracking (MOT). The attentional capture paradigm is regularly used to study conditions of attentional control. It has up to now not been used to assess influences of sudden onset distractor stimuli in MOT. We investigated whether attentional capture does occur in MOT: Are onset distractors processed at all in dynamic attentional tasks? We found that sudden onset distractors were effective in lowering probe detection, thus demonstrating attentional capture. Tracking performance as dependent measure was not affected. The attentional capture effect persisted in conditions of higher tracking load (Experiment 2) and was dramatically increased in lower presentation frequency of the onset distractor (Experiment 3). Tracking performance was shown to suffer only when onset distractors were presented serially with very short time gaps in between, thus effectively disturbing re-engaging attention on the tracking set (Experiment 4). We discuss that rapid dis- and re-engagement of the attention process on target objects and an additional more basic process that continuously provides location information allow managing strong disruptions of attention during tracking.

Fear of Missing Out Predicts Distraction by Social Reward Signals Displayed on a Smartphone in Difficult Driving Situations

Smartphones are particularly likely to elicit driver distraction with obvious negative repercussions on road safety. Recent selective attention models lead to expect that smartphones might be very effective in capturing attention due to their social reward history. Hence, individual differences in terms of Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) – i.e., of the apprehension of missing out on socially rewarding experiences – should play an important role in driver distraction. This factor has already been associated with self-reported estimations of greater attention paid to smartphones while driving, but the potential link between FoMO and smartphone-induced distraction has never been tested empirically. Therefore, we conducted a preliminary study to investigate whether FoMO would modulate attentional capture by reward distractors displayed on a smartphone. First, participants performed a classical visual search task in which neutral stimuli (colored circles) were associated with high or low social reward outcomes. Then, they had to detect a pedestrian or a roe deer in driving scenes with various levels of fog density. The social reward stimuli were displayed as distractors on the screen of a smartphone embedded in the pictures. The results showed a significant three-way interaction between FoMO, social reward distraction, and task difficulty. More precisely, under attention-demanding conditions (i.e., high-fog density), individual FoMO scores predicted attentional capture by social reward distractors, with longer reaction times (RTs) for high rather than low social reward distractors. These results highlight the importance to consider reward history and FoMO when investigating smartphone-based distraction. Limitations are discussed, notably regarding our sample characteristics (i.e., mainly young females) that might hamper the generalization of our findings to the overall population. Future research directions are provided.

Across-trial spatial suppression in visual search

In order to focus on objects of interest, humans must be able to avoid distraction by salient stimuli that are not relevant to the task at hand. Many recent studies have shown that through statistical learning we are able to suppress the location that is most likely to contain a salient distractor. Here we demonstrate a remarkable flexibility in attentional suppression. Participants had to search for a shape singleton while a color distractor singleton was present. Unbeknown to the participant, the color distractor was presented according to a consistent pattern across trials. Our findings show that participants learn this distractor sequence as they proactively suppressed the anticipated location of the distractor on the next trial. Critically, none of the participants were aware of these hidden sequences. We conclude that the spatial priority map is highly flexible, operating at a subconscious level preparing the attentional system for what will happen next.

Reward-driven attention alters perceived salience

Many studies have revealed that reward-associated features capture attention. Neurophysiological evidence further suggests that this reward-driven attention effect modulates visual processes by enhancing low-level visual salience. However, no behavioral study to date has directly examined whether reward-driven attention changes how people see. Combining the two-phase paradigm with a psychophysical method, the current study found that compared with nonsalient cues associated with lower reward, the nonsalient cues associated with higher reward captured more attention, and increased the perceived contrast of the subsequent stimuli. This is the first direct behavioral evidence of the effect of reward-driven attention on low-level visual perception.

Gotcha: Working memory prioritization from automatic attentional biases

Attention is an important resource for prioritizing information in working memory (WM), and it can be deployed both strategically and automatically. Most research investigating the relationship between WM and attention has focused on strategic efforts to deploy attentional resources toward remembering relevant information. However, such voluntary attentional control represents a mere subset of the attentional processes that select information to be encoded and maintained in WM (Theeuwes, Journal of Cognition, 1[1]: 29, 1-15, 2018). Here, we discuss three ways in which information becomes prioritized automatically in WM-physical salience, statistical learning, and reward learning. This review integrates findings from perception and working memory studies to propose a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between attention and working memory.

An egocentric straight-ahead bias in primate's vision

As we plan to reach or manipulate objects, we generally orient our body so as to face them. Other objects occupying the same portion of space will likely represent potential obstacles for the intended action. Thus, either as targets or as obstacles, the objects located straight in front of us are often endowed with a special behavioral status. Here, we review a set of recent electrophysiological, imaging and behavioral studies bringing converging evidence that the objects which lie straight-ahead are subject to privileged visual processing. More precisely, these works collectively demonstrate that when gaze steers central vision away from the straight-ahead direction, the latter is still prioritized in peripheral vision. Straight-ahead objects evoke (1) stronger neuronal responses in macaque peripheral V1 neurons, (2) stronger EEG and fMRI activations across the human visual cortex and (3) faster reactive hand and eye movements. Here, we discuss the functional implications and underlying mechanisms behind this phenomenon. Notably, we propose that it can be considered as a new type of visuospatial attentional mechanism, distinct from the previously documented classes of endogenous and exogenous attention.

Capture or suppression? Attentional allocation upon reward and loss-associated nonsalient distractors are supported by distinct neural mechanisms: An EEG study

Previous studies suggest that a reward-associated salient distractor can induce bottom-up attentional capture. Hitherto, the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying attentional allocation upon reward/loss associated nonsalient stimulus remain hardly investigated. The present study built the association between nonsalient stimuli and value, and tested it with a decision-making task. Consequently, we examined whether and how reward/loss-associated nonsalient stimuli (as distractors) influenced attentional allocation in a rapid serial visual presentation task. Behavioral analysis showed a significantly faster recognition of target in the loss condition compared to performance in the neutral/reward conditions. Electrophysiological results showed that reward-associated distractors induced a significant Pd component, while loss-associated distractors induced a significantly higher theta oscillation. These results demonstrated that subjects could proactively suppress reward-associated distractors. More importantly, we showed that attentional allocation upon reward/loss-associated nonsalient distractors is supported by distinct neural mechanisms.

Self-explaining roads: What does visual cognition tell us about designing safer roads?

In 1995, Theeuwes and Godthelp published a paper called "self-explaining roads," in which they argued for the development of a new concept for approaching safe road design. Since this publication, self-explaining roads (SER) became one of the leading principles in road design worldwide. The underlying notion is that roads should be designed in such a way that road users immediately know how to behave and what to expect on these roads. In other words, the environment should be designed such that it elicits adequate and safe behavior. The present paper describes in detail the theoretical basis for the idea of SER and explains why this has such a large effect on human behavior. It is argued that the notion is firmly rooted in the theoretical framework of statistical learning, subjective road categorization and the associated expectations. The paper illustrates some successful implementation and describes recent developments worldwide.

Baseline Differences in Anxiety Affect Attention and tDCS-Mediated Learning

Variable responses to transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) protocols across individuals are widely reported, but the reasons behind this variation are unclear. This includes tDCS protocols meant to improve attention. Attentional control is impacted by top-down and bottom-up processes, and this relationship is affected by state characteristics such as anxiety. According to Attentional Control Theory, anxiety biases attention towards bottom-up and stimulus-driven processing. The goal of this study was to explore the extent to which differences in state anxiety and related measures affect visual attention and category learning, both with and without the influence of tDCS. Using discovery learning, participants were trained to classify pictures of European streets into two categories while receiving 30 min of 2.0 mA anodal, cathodal, or sham tDCS over the rVLPFC. The pictures were classifiable according to two separate rules, one stimulus and one hypothesis-driven. The Remote Associates Test (RAT), Profile of Mood States, and Attention Networks Task (ANT) were used to understand the effects of individual differences at baseline on subsequent tDCS-mediated learning. Multinomial logistic regression was fit to predict rule learning based on the baseline measures, with subjects classified according to whether they used the stimulus-driven or hypothesis-driven rule to classify the pictures. The overall model showed a classification accuracy of 74.1%. The type of tDCS stimulation applied, attentional orienting score, and self-reported mood were significant predictors of different categories of rule learning. These results indicate that anxiety can influence the quality of subjects' attention at the onset of the task and that these attentional differences can influence tDCS-mediated category learning during the rapid assessment of visual scenes. These findings have implications for understanding the complex interactions that give rise to the variability in response to tDCS.

Predictive remapping leaves a behaviorally measurable attentional trace on eye-centered brain maps

How does the brain maintain spatial attention despite the retinal displacement of objects by saccades? A possible solution is to use the vector of an upcoming saccade to compensate for the shift of objects on eye-centered (retinotopic) brain maps. In support of this hypothesis, previous studies have revealed attentional effects at the future retinal locus of an attended object, just before the onset of saccades. A critical yet unresolved theoretical issue is whether predictively remapped attentional effects would persist long enough on eye-centered brain maps, so no external input (goal, expectation, reward, memory, etc.) is needed to maintain spatial attention immediately following saccades. The present study examined this issue with inhibition of return (IOR), an attentional effect that reveals itself in both world-centered and eye-centered coordinates, and predictively remaps before saccades. In the first task, a saccade was introduced to a cueing task ("nonreturn-saccade task") to show that IOR is coded in world-centered coordinates following saccades. In a second cueing task, two consecutive saccades were executed to trigger remapping and to dissociate the retinal locus relevant to remapping from the cued retinal locus ("return-saccade" task). IOR was observed at the remapped retinal locus 430-ms following the (first) saccade that triggered remapping. A third cueing task ("no-remapping" task) further revealed that the lingering IOR effect left by remapping was not confounded by the attention spillover. These results together show that predictive remapping leaves a robust attentional trace on eye-centered brain maps. This retinotopic trace is sufficient to sustain spatial attention for a few hundred milliseconds following saccades.

The influence of associative reward learning on motor inhibition

Stimuli that predict a rewarding outcome can cause difficulties to inhibit unfavourable behaviour. Research suggests that this is also the case for stimuli with a history of reward extending these effects on action control to situations, where reward is no longer accessible. We expand this line of research by investigating if previously reward-predictive stimuli promote behavioural activation and impair motor inhibition in a second unrelated task. In two experiments participants were trained to associate colours with a monetary reward or neutral feedback. Afterwards participants performed a cued go/no-go task, where cues appeared in the colours previously associated with feedback during training. In both experiments training resulted in faster responses in rewarded trials providing evidence of a value-driven response bias as long as reward was accessible. However, stimuli with a history of reward did not interfere with goal-directed action and inhibition in a subsequent task after removal of the reward incentives. While the first experiment was not conclusive regarding an impact of reward-associated cues on response inhibition, the second experiment, validated by Bayesian statistics, clearly questioned an effect of reward history on inhibitory control. This stands in contrast to earlier findings suggesting that the effect of reward history on subsequent action control is not as consistent as previously assumed. Our results show that participants are able to overcome influences from Pavlovian learning in a simple inhibition task. We discuss our findings with respect to features of the experimental design which may help or complicate overcoming behavioural biases induced by reward history.

Feature-Based Attentional Weighting and Re-weighting in the Absence of Visual Awareness

Visual attention evolved as an adaptive mechanism allowing us to cope with a rapidly changing environment. It enables the facilitated processing of relevant information, often automatically and governed by implicit motives. However, despite recent advances in understanding the relationship between consciousness and visual attention, the functional scope of unconscious attentional control is still under debate. Here, we present a novel masking paradigm in which volunteers were to distinguish between varying orientations of a briefly presented, masked grating stimulus. Combining signal detection theory and subjective measures of awareness, we show that performance on unaware trials was consistent with visual selection being weighted towards repeated orientations of Gabor patches and reallocated in response to a novel unconsciously processed orientation. This was particularly present in trials in which the prior feature was strongly weighted and only if the novel feature was invisible. Thus, our results provide evidence that invisible orientation stimuli can trigger the reallocation of history-guided visual selection weights.

Attentional Templates Are Sharpened through Differential Signal Enhancement, Not Differential Allocation of Attention

In visual search, the internal representation of the target feature is referred to as the attentional template. The attentional template can be broad or precise depending on the task requirements. In singleton search, the attentional template is broad because the target is the only colored element in the display. In feature search, a precise attentional template is required because the target is in a specific color in an array of varied colors. To measure the precision of the attentional template, we used a cue-target paradigm where cueing benefits decrease when the cue color differs from the target color. Consistent with broad and precise attentional templates, the decrease of cueing effects was stronger in feature than in singleton search. Measurements of ERPs showed that the N2pc elicited by the cue decreased with increasing color difference, suggesting that attention was more strongly captured by cues that were similar to the target. However, the cue-elicited N2pc did not differ between feature and singleton search, making it unlikely to reflect the mechanism underlying attentional template precision. Furthermore, there was no evidence for attentional suppression as there was no cue-elicited P_D, even in conditions where the cueing benefit turned into a same-location cost. However, an index of signal enhancement, the contralateral positivity, reflected attention template precision. In general, there was sensory enhancement of the stimulus appearing at the cued location in the search display. With broad attentional templates, any stimulus at the cued location was enhanced, whereas enhancement was restricted to target-matching colors with precise attentional templates.

Impaired disengagement of attention from computer-related stimuli in Internet Gaming Disorder: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Attentional biases contribute to the maintenance of addictive behaviors. For the problematic use of online gaming - recognized as Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) - first evidence points to a bias towards in-game stimuli. This study aimed to provide behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for a generalized bias towards computer-related stimuli, and to identify the specific attentional processes contributing to this bias: facilitated attention deployment, impaired disengagement or failed suppression.

METHOD

Twenty participants with IGD and 23 casual gamers performed a visual search task with photographs of real-world objects. Either the target or a to-be-ignored distractor was addiction-relevant (computer-related), whereas all other items were addiction-irrelevant (related to cars or sport). Event-related potential components associated with facilitated attentional deployment to the target (NT), its post-selection processing (SPCN), and suppression of irrelevant information (PD) were analyzed.

RESULTS

Unlike casual gamers, gamers with IGD exhibited prolonged reaction times and increased SPCN amplitudes for computer-related stimuli, reflecting their continued attentional processing. At the individual level, larger SPCN amplitudes were associated with longer delays in reaction time.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

This pattern of results indicates that the disengagement of attention from computer-related stimuli is impaired in IGD. More generally, our findings demonstrate that conditioning processes occur in IGD, and thus open up new avenues for treatment.

Reward Influences Masked Free-Choice Priming

While it is known that reward induces attentional prioritization, it is not clear what effect reward-learning has when associated with stimuli that are not fully perceived. The masked priming paradigm has been extensively used to investigate the indirect impact of brief stimuli on response behavior. Interestingly, the effect of masked primes is observed even when participants choose their responses freely. While classical theories assume this process to be automatic, recent studies have provided evidence for attentional modulations of masked priming effects. Most such studies have manipulated bottom-up or top-down modes of attentional selection, but the role of “newer” forms of attentional control such as reward-learning and selection history remains unclear. In two experiments, with number and arrow primes, we examined whether reward-mediated attentional selection modulates masked priming when responses are chosen freely. In both experiments, we observed that primes associated with high-reward lead to enhanced free-choice priming compared to primes associated with no-reward. The effect was seen on both proportion of choices and response times, and was more evident in the faster responses. In the slower responses, the effect was diminished. Our study adds to the growing literature showing the susceptibility of masked priming to factors related to attention and executive control.