TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2023//
TI  - Proactive suppression can be applied to multiple salient distractors in visual search
JO  - Journal of experimental psychology: general
A1  - Drisdelle, Brandi Lee
A1  - Eimer, Martin
SP  - 2504
EP  - 2519
VL  - 152
IS  - 9
N2  - There is a growing body of research demonstrating that the capture of attention by a single salient distractor can be prevented via proactive suppression. In real-world contexts, there are often several distracting events that compete for attention, but it is entirely unknown whether multiple objects can be suppressed concurrently. We used behavioral and electrophysiological measures to investigate the existence and time course of multiple-item suppression. We employed search displays that contained either one or two uniquely colored distractors that differed in their salience (S+ and S−), or no such distractors. Search performance improved with the number of salient distractors, indicating that the suppression of multiple items reduced the effective display set size. This was also the case when the target color was no longer fully predictable, ruling out an alternative explanation in terms of attentional guidance by target templates. In an experiment where S+ and S− always appeared together in the same display, the PD component (a marker of proactive suppression) was triggered exclusively by the more salient distractor (S+), indicative of single-item suppression. However, when displays with one or both salient distractors were intermixed, a reliable PD component was also triggered by S−, even when it was accompanied by S+ in the same display. These results show that multiple concurrent salient signals can be proactively inhibited. They demonstrate that signal suppression processes can be adaptively employed to counteract visual distraction at different locations, in order to facilitate the attentional selection of relevant objects in crowded visual environments.     Public Significance Statement    This study shows that humans are capable of suppressing multiple salient but irrelevant visual items simultaneously. This highlights the flexibility of inhibitory mechanisms in selective attention. We provide both behavioral and electrophysiological evidence of multiple distractor suppression.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0096-3445
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0001398
ID  - ref1
ER  -