Abstract
Several recent studies have shown that attention-al capture is not an automatic process. For example, abrupt peripheral onsets do not affect the processing of targets presented subsequently at that location when participants have to concurrently perform a perceptually demanding task elsewhere. This result leaves open the question of whether peripheral onsets lose their effectiveness in capturing attention or whether, instead, the performance of a perceptually demanding task entails a faster disengage-ment of attention from the cued location. Here, we measured exogenous spatial attentional-orienting effects either while participants performed a concurrent perceptu-ally demanding central-monitoring task (a rapid serial visual presentation of letters for a to-be-detected digit target; Experiments 1 and 2) or in isolation (the baseline condition in Experiment 2). The results showed that peripheral onsets captured participants' attention at both the 80-and 190-ms stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) in the baseline condition. Crucially, however, during concur-rent central monitoring, peripheral onsets were effective in capturing attention only at an 80-ms SOA, while the orienting effect disappeared as soon as a changing letter drew participants' attention back to the central stream (at an SOA of 190 ms). These findings demonstrate that task-irrelevant abrupt onsets cannot be entirely overridden by top-down attentional control, although attentional capture effects are dramatically reduced by an ongoing perceptually demanding task.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 15-23 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics |
Volume | 73 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2011 |
Keywords
- Attentional capture
- Exogenous orienting
- Load
- Perception
- Spatial cuing
- Visual
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sensory Systems
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology