4.5 Article

Statistical learning in visual search reflects distractor rarity, not only attentional suppression

Journal

PSYCHONOMIC BULLETIN & REVIEW
Volume 29, Issue 5, Pages 1890-1897

Publisher

SPRINGER
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-022-02097-x

Keywords

Visual search; Attentional selection; Attentional suppression; Statistical learning

Funding

  1. Swiss National Science Foundation [100019_182146]
  2. Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) [100019_182146] Funding Source: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)

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The study found that in visual search tasks, attentional suppression can reduce interference when a salient distractor appears more frequently at a certain position, but interference may increase on low-probability positions.
In visual search tasks, salient distractors may capture attention involuntarily, but interference can be reduced when the salient distractor appears more frequently on one out of several possible positions. The reduction was attributed to attentional suppression of the high-probability position. However, all previous studies on this topic compared performance on the high-probability position to the remaining positions, which had a low probability of containing the distractor. Therefore, it is not clear whether the difference resulted from reduced interference on the high-probability position or from increased interference on the low-probability positions. To decide between these alternatives, we compared high-probability and low-probability with equal-probability positions. Consistent with attentional suppression, interference was reduced on the high-probability position compared with equal-probability positions. However, there was also an increase in interference on low-probability positions compared with equal-probability positions. The increase is in line with previous reports of boosted interference when distractors are rare. Our results show that the experimental design used in previous research is insufficient to separate effects of attentional suppression and those of distractor rarity.

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