Citation

Bogaerts L, van Moorselaar D, Theeuwes J. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/xhp0000986

PMID

35130015

Abstract

Salient distractors such as color singletons typically capture attention. Recent studies have shown that probabilistic expectations of color singletons' occurrence-even when their location and features are unpredictable-can eliminate attentional capture. Here we ask whether this effect, referred to as "second-order distractor suppression," (a) could be merely a result of repetition priming, and (b) is also observed when distractor occurrences are predictable within a sequence of trials? Experiment 1 introduces a novel approach for manipulating the frequency of distractor occurrence while controlling for intertrial priming by design, by embedding identical trial sequences in the to-be-compared conditions. We observed no elimination but significant attenuation of capture in the condition with a higher distractor frequency. In Experiments 2 and 3 we investigated the effect of the trial-to-trial predictability of distractor presence. Repeating regular distractor absent/present patterns did not result in attenuated capture compared with a random condition, not even when upcoming distractor presence was cued. Taken together, the results demonstrate that second-order distractor suppression is not merely a result of repetition priming. However, it is not a response to any type of expectation; this nonspecific type of suppression is almost instantly elicited by environments characterized by a high likelihood of distractors but not by distractor presence that can be anticipated on a trial-by-trial basis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Language: en