Citation

Normand A, Autin F, Croizet JC. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 2014; 22(3): 737-742.

Affiliation

Centre de Recherche Sur la Cognition et l'Apprentissage (CeRCA UMR 7295), Université de Poitiers and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 5 Rue Théodore Lefebvre, Poitiers, 86000, France, ae.normand@gmail.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Psychonomic Society Publications)

DOI

10.3758/s13423-014-0729-8

PMID

25233881

Abstract

Perceptual load has been found to be a powerful bottom-up determinant of distractibility, with high perceptual load preventing distraction by any irrelevant information. However, when under evaluative pressure, individuals exert top-down attentional control by giving greater weight to task-relevant features, making them more distractible from task-relevant distractors. One study tested whether the top-down modulation of attention under evaluative pressure overcomes the beneficial bottom-up effect of high perceptual load on distraction. Using a response-competition task, we replicated previous findings that high levels of perceptual load suppress task-relevant distractor response interference, but only for participants in a control condition. Participants under evaluative pressure (i.e., who believed their intelligence was assessed) showed interference from task-relevant distractor at all levels of perceptual load. This research challenges the assumptions of the perceptual load theory and sheds light on a neglected determinant of distractibility: the self-relevance of the performance situation in which attentional control is solicited.

Language: en