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    Attraction, Distraction and Action: Multiple Perspectives on Attentional Capture
    Attraction, Distraction and Action: Multiple Perspectives on Attentional Capture
    Attraction, Distraction and Action: Multiple Perspectives on Attentional Capture
    Ebook735 pages9 hours

    Attraction, Distraction and Action: Multiple Perspectives on Attentional Capture

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    Over the last decade there has been a spate of research on the empirical phenomenon known as "attentional capture". Interest in capture can be attributed not only to its applied significance, but also to the implications of the phenomenon for theories of selective attention, as well as cognitive control in general. This growing interest, however, has also spawned a wide variety of experimental paradigms, empirical results, and theoretical perspectives. In June of 2000, 40 experimental psychologists converged on Villanova University for a conference and workshop on attentional capture. The intent was to provide an intimate forum for scientists from diverse perspectives and backgrounds, and using diverse methodologies to present their research on attentional capture and also engage in small group discussions on such key issues as the definition, measurement, and theoretical treatment of attention capture. This book presents a collection of chapters based on those presentations and discussions. Chapters are organized around areas such as neuroscience, visual cognition, developmental, individual differences and dynamical systems. The volume provides: a summary of the latest cutting edge research; an important compass for future research in this area; a useful survey of the field; contributions from internationally recognized experts in attention. Due to its exclusive focus on the topic of attentional capture the volume should make an excellent supplemental text or reference book for advanced undergraduate or graduate seminars in cognitive psychology and attention.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherElsevier Science
    Release dateNov 30, 2001
    ISBN9780080499550
    Attraction, Distraction and Action: Multiple Perspectives on Attentional Capture

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      Attraction, Distraction and Action - Elsevier Science

      Attraction, Distraction and Action

      Multiple Perspectives on Attentional Capture

      First Edition

      Bradley S. Gibson

      Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, U.S.A.

      Charles L. Folk

      Department of Psychology, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, U.S.A.

      NH

      2001

      ELSEVIER

      Amsterdam – London – NewYork – Oxford – Paris – Shannon – Tokyo

      Table of Contents

      Cover image

      Title page

      Copyright page

      Preface

      Publisher Summary

      Contributors

      Publisher Summary

      Part I: Neuroscience

      1: Electrophysiological Studies of Reflexive Attention

      Abstract

      Background

      The Effects of Reflexive Attentional Capture on Visual Processing: ERP Studies

      Inhibition of Return: Inhibition of Perceptual Processing or Motor Programming?

      Conclusions

      Authors’ Notes

      2: Inhibition of Return in Monkey and Man

      Introduction

      Summary and Conclusion

      Part II: Visual Cognition

      3: Inattentional Blindness and Attentional Capture: Evidence for Attention-Based Theories of Visual Salience

      The Present Experiments

      Experiment 1

      Results and Discussion

      Experiment 2

      General Discussion

      Author Notes

      4: Involuntary Orienting to Flashing Distractors in Delayed Search?

      Experiment 1

      Experiment 2

      Experiment 3

      Results

      General Discussion

      5: Attentional Capture in the Spatial and Temporal Domains

      The Contingent Capture Hypothesis

      A Challenge to the Contingent Capture Hypothesis

      New Evidence of Top-Down Control in Visual Search

      The RSVP Paradigm and the Attentional Blink

      Attentional Capture in the RSVP paradigm

      General Discussion

      Author Note

      6: Attentional and Oculomotor Capture

      Attentional Capture

      Oculomotor capture

      Further speculations

      Authors Notes

      7: Attention Capture, Orienting, and Awareness

      Selective Looking, Inattentional Blindness, and Explicit Attention Capture

      Integrating Implicit and Explicit Attention Capture

      Conclusion

      Acknowledgments

      Part III: Multiple Modalities

      8: Using Pre-pulse Inhibition to Study Attentional Capture: A Warning About Pre-pulse Correlations

      Temporal Dynamics of Pre-pulse Inhibition

      Pre-pulse Inhibition and Attentional Capture

      Classical Conditioning of Pre-pulse Inhibition

      Overview

      Discussion

      Conclusions

      9: Temporal Expectancies, Capture, and Timing in Auditory Sequences

      I Attending to Visual and Auditory Events: An Overview

      II Dynamics of Attending to Auditory Sequences

      III Evidence for Dynamic Attending to Slow Auditory Sequences

      IV General Concluding Remarks

      Acknowledgements

      10: Crossmodal Attentional Capture: A Controversy Resolved?

      Introduction

      Speeded Detection Tasks

      Speeded Discrimination Tasks

      Implicit spatial discrimination task

      Crossmodal Attentional Capture

      Modality-Specific vs. Supramodal Attention Systems

      Neural Correlates of Crossmodal Capture

      Crossmodal Capture in the Applied Domain

      Conclusions

      Author Notes

      Part IV: Developmental

      11: Testing Models of Attentional Capture During Early Infancy

      The Selectivity of Visual Attention Early in Life

      Methodology and Modeling

      Some Sample Data on Selectivity and Capture

      Considering Other Models

      Conclusions

      Author Note

      12: Attentional Capture, Attentional Control and Aging

      Cognitive Aging: Theory and Research

      Attentional Control: Interaction of Stimulus-Driven and Goal-Directed Attention

      Aging and Attentional Capture

      Summary and Conclusion

      Acknowledgments

      Part V: Individual Differences

      13: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Attentional Control

      Relationships Between Motivation and Attention

      Individual Differences in Motivation and Attention

      Studies Relating Temperament, Motivation, and Attention

      Summary and Conclusions

      14: Capacity, Control and Conflict: An Individual Differences Perspective on Attentional Capture

      Working Memory and Working Memory Capacity

      Working Memory Capacity Predicts Attentional Control and Capture: The Evidence

      Conclusion

      Authors’ Notes

      Part VI: Dynmical Systems/Evolution

      15: A Dynamic, Evolutionary Perspective on Attention Capture

      The Phenomena to be Explained and the Explanations

      Limitations to Contemporary Theories of Attention Capture

      A Dynamical Systems Framework

      Segue

      Attention Capture and Biological Evolution

      Attention Capture and Cultural Evolution

      Social Implications of Attention Capture

      Subject index

      Publisher Summary

      Copyright

      Preface

      Publisher Summary

      The notion that certain mental or physical events can capture attention has strong intuitive appeal. Such intuitions are typically based on experiences in which an irrelevant event summons or attracts attention away from the demands of a current task. Although this apparent vulnerability to external distraction can, in some situations, be detrimental to the mental and physical health of the organism (as when the distracting event causes us to have an automobile accident), it may also be beneficial to the organism in situations where adaptation to important environmental change is required (as when the distracting event is itself potentially harmful and should therefore be avoided). Because attentional capture can have profound consequences both positive and negative) for mental and physical action, it is necessary to go beyond a simple intuitive understanding of this complex behavior. Thus, the study of attentional capture appears to be at somewhat of a crossroad. Although there is growing interest in the phenomenon, and general agreement as to its practical and theoretical importance, there is also a growing diversity of empirical findings, theoretical perspectives, and experimental approaches. By far, the issue of how to define attentional capture generated the most extensive discussions, with no clear consensus emerging. Nonetheless, although many of the fundamental issues remained unresolved, the interdisciplinary nature of the conference resulted in an exciting exchange of ideas and theory, many of which are represented in the forthcoming chapters of this book.

      Charles L. Folk; Bradley S. Gibson

      The notion that certain mental or physical events can capture attention has strong intuitive appeal. Such intuitions are typically based on experiences in which an irrelevant event summons or attracts attention away from the demands of a current task. Although this apparent vulnerability to extemal distraction can, in some situations, be detrimental to the mental and physical health of the organism (as when the distracting event causes us to have an automobile accident), it may also be beneficial to the organism in situations where adaptation to important environmental change is required (as when the distracting event is itself potentially harmful and should therefore be avoided). Because attentional capture can have profound consequences both positive and negative) for mental and physical action, it is necessary to go beyond a simple intuitive understanding of this complex behavior.

      Indeed, scientific interest in attentional capture has grown exponentially over the last 10 years. A good part of this interest stems from the fact that modeling attentional capture has the potential to provide fundamental insights into the nature of cognitive control in general. More specifically, attentional capture provides an important empirical domain for modeling the interaction between automatic and controlled processing. However, a broad survey of this field suggests that the term capture means different things to different people. In some cases, it refers to shifts of spatial attention, in others involuntary saccades, and in still others general distraction by irrelevant stimuli. The properties that elicit capture can also range from abrupt flashes of light, to unexpected tones, to semantic novelty, to reoccurring thoughts. There also appear to be a number of different theoretical perspectives on the mechanisms underlying capture (both functional and neurophysiological) and the level of cognitive control over capture.

      Thus, the study of attentional capture appears to be at somewhat of a crossroad. Although there is growing interest in the phenomenon, and general agreement as to its practical and theoretical importance, there is also a growing diversity of empirical findings, theoretical perspectives, and experimental approaches. We believe that at this crossroad, it is critical to pause and attempt to reach some consensus on the existing state of research on attentional capture, and to chart new directions for future research on this important topic. However, given the diversity of experimental approaches to attentional capture, there is currently no forum for bringing together researchers to accomplish these goals. Existing conferences, such as Psychonomics, ARVO, Neuroscience, SRCD, Cognitive Aging, etc., rarely attract all the relevant researchers.

      Therefore, the first conference and workshop devoted exclusively to the study of attentional capture was held on June 3-4, 2000 at Villanova University. Over twenty-five researchers from a variety of different theoretical and methodological perspectives participated. The express purpose of the conference was twofold: The first purpose was to provide a forum for researchers to present their latest empirical findings and theoretical developments; the second purpose was to engage in structured discussions concerning such fundamental issues as the definition of attentional capture, behavioral manifestations of attentional capture, and the measurement of attentional capture. By far, the issue of how to define attentional capture generated the most extensive discussions, with no clear consensus emerging. (Indeed, one of the discussion group leaders described his role as akin to herding cats.) Nonetheless, although many of the fundamental issues remained unresolved, the interdisciplinary nature of the conference resulted in an exciting exchange of ideas and theory, many of which are represented in the following chapters.

      The present volume is organized into six different topic areas, or perspectives. Each chapter reflects either cutting-edge research or state-of-the-art reviews of specific content areas. The Neuroscience section contains chapters that explore the biological underpinnings of attentional capture. The Visual Cognition section explores the theoretical boundaries of attentional capture within the visual domain, with particular emphasis on the debate regarding the degree of top-down control over attentional capture. The Multiple Modalities section extends the phenomenon of attentional capture to other modalities besides vision, including work on pre-pulse inhibition, auditory attention, and cross-modal interactions. The Developmental section addresses how attentional capture varies across the life span; whereas, the Individual Differences section addresses how attentional capture varies across individuals at similar stages of development. And, finally, the Dynamical Systems/Evolution section addresses the function of attentional capture from a broad, evolutionary perspective.

      We owe a debt of gratitude to the National Science Foundation and Villanova University for providing generous funding for this project. We would especially like to thank Helene Intraub at NSF for her encouragement and support. We also like to thank all those who participated in the Villanova Capture Conference, including presenters as well as those who participated in the workshop discussions; collectively, you made it an unqualified success. Finally, we are thank Clare Gideon for her clerical assistance in preparing the manuscript on which this volume is based.

      Contributors

      Publisher Summary

      This section lists the eminent contributors whose work has been referenced throughout the book. Their significant contribution has not only helped enhance the understanding of attentional capture, but their work has also helped researchers in further developing the field of neuroscience.

      Part I

      Neuroscience

      1

      Electrophysiological Studies of Reflexive Attention

      Joseph B. Hopfinger; George R. Mangun

      Abstract

      Models of human cognition hold that information processing occurs in a series of stages. Cognitive psychology, in particular, is concerned with the internal mental processes that begin with the appearance of an external stimulus and result in a behavioral response. An enduring question has focused on determining the stage or stages of information processing at which attention might have an influence. Measures of overt behavior have long been used to make inferences about the internal mental mechanisms of attention. Increasingly though, physiological measures of human brain activity have been used to provide direct measures of discrete stages of information processing during attentional performance. In this chapter, we briefly review the event-related potential (ERP) approach to the study of attention, and present recent results utilizing this methodology in the study of reflexive attentional capture. These experiments have revealed that reflexive attention is able to influence multiple stages of information processing beginning at a relatively early stage of visual cortical analysis.

      Background

      Tracking information processing in the brain: Electrophysiological methods

      The development of electrophysiological recording techniques dates back to the early 1930’s, when Hans Berger and Herbert Jasper developed techniques that would later be used to directly examine the neural mechanisms of the human brain’s attention systems (Jasper, 1935). By recording from electrodes placed on a human subject’s scalp, they were able to measure small voltage fluctuations that reflected underlying neural activity. The recording of the ongoing voltage variations measured on the scalp is known as the electroencephalogram (EEG) and is now known to be primarily a measure of the post-synaptic (dendritic) potentials from populations of synchronously active and aligned neurons (see Nunez, 1981 for a more comprehensive discussion). Early electrophysiologists analyzed large rhythmic fluctuations in the EEG (e.g., alpha waves) that could index overall states of arousal (e.g., Jasper, 1935). Although the ongoing EEG can provide a measure of the subject’s global brain state, it is not as well suited for identifying patterns of brain activity associated with specific types of stimulus processing or specific mental functions. This is due to the fact that the larger rhythmic potentials of the ongoing EEG may be several times larger in amplitude than the relatively small fluctuations produced by neural activity supporting individual mental events. The EEG reflects processes occurring throughout the brain related to a host of mental activities, as well as voltage fluctuation that are not due to brain activity (e.g., artifacts generated by muscles on the head or neck). As a result, the neural activity generated by a specific mental event of interest can be difficult or impossible to observe in the ongoing EEG.

      The voltage fluctuations produced by particular events of interest can, however, be detected using signal averaging procedures. For example, the neural activity produced by a specific visual stimulus can be measured if the ongoing EEG is averaged over multiple occurrences of that specific visual event (Figure 1). Epochs of time surrounding the visual event of interest can be extracted from the EEG record and averaged together, after aligning the onset of the visual stimulus for each epoch. The voltage amplitude can then be averaged at each timepoint separately, resulting in a single event-related-potential (ERP) waveform. The ERP thus represents the response to a specific event, timelocked to the onset of that event. The averaging process effectively cancels out the electrical activity in the EEG that is not time-locked to the stimulus event of interest. This occurs because on average over many trials, the uncorrelated activity is just as likely to be of positive or negative polarity at any post-stimulus time point. Given a sufficient number of trials, the averaging process leaves only the activity evoked by the event of interest.

      Figure 1 At left is shown an example of the scalp recorded electroencephalogram (EEG), recorded continuously while the event of interest (in this case a visual stimulus: S) is presented multiple times. Epochs of the EEG surrounding the onset of the visual event are extracted, aligned according to the onset time of the event of interest, and then averaged point by point (middle column). The resulting average is referred to as the Event-Related Potential (ERP; right column). Note that the amplitude of the ERP is much less than that of the EEG, a typical situation that necessitates the averaging procedure.

      A canonical ERP waveform consists of a series of voltage fluctuations, representing positive and negative potentials generated by the event of interest. As shown in Figure 1, the voltage fluctuations are typically labeled according to: (1) polarity (Positive, or Negative; note that the convention followed here plots positive voltages downward); and (2) order of occurrence (P1 = 1st major exclusively-positive component) or latency of occurrence (e.g., the peak of the NP80 component, which can be negative or positive, depending on the location of the visual stimulus, occurs at approximately 80 ms latency). The prestimulus period represents the activity time-locked to the event of interest that occurs before the stimulus appears. Since the event of interest has not yet occurred, under most circumstances, there should be no systematic activity before the onset of the event of interest. Therefore, this period can be used as a measure of the effectiveness of the averaging procedure in eliminating activity that is not due to the event of interest.

      Using ERPs, it is possible to measure neural activity from the moment in time a stimulus is presented, through multiple levels of processing, up to and including response execution. ERP components can be related to hypothesized stages of mental processing (indicated schematically in Figure 2). Although much work remains to be done in order to understand the specific mental functions subserved by each particular ERP component, many of these components can at least be classified as underlying simple sensory processes or higher order cognitive processes. The ability to track mental processing in real time has proven very useful in helping to elucidate the stage(s) of processing that attention may act upon to modify mental processing.

      Figure 2 Shown at the top are a few of the many hypothesized stages of information processing that intercede between the initial presentation of a physical stimulus and an eventual response to that stimulus. At bottom, an ERP waveform is shown approximately aligned with the hypothesized stages of processing. The ERP waveform shown here is only for illustration purposes - the components shown here are typically observed at different scalp sites; not all would be observed at the same scalp location. In this chapter, we will focus mainly upon the sensory P1 component, and on the P300 component that indexes post-sensory higher-order cognitive processing.

      Early versus late selection

      A classic debate in psychology has concerned the nature of our ability to filter out unwanted information. Specifically, the debate concerns the level of information processing at which relevant information is selected. One possibility is that this selection process occurs only just before a response must be made. This would be the extreme version of the late-selection argument that holds that all information received by the senses is fully processed to the level of semantic meaning (e.g., Deutsch & Deutsch, 1963). Accordingly, all sensory inputs would be completely processed, and selection would involve choosing to respond to one of several completely processed inputs (e.g., Allport et al., 1985). Alternatively, as suggested by early-selection theories, information may get filtered out well before it is ever processed to a level of semantic meaning. Broadbent (1958) argued that selective attention acts as a gate that allows only the desired information to proceed to higher-order processing, while keeping out all irrelevant information. Treisman (1960) argued along less extreme lines that attention acts to attenuate, rather than completely filter out, the processing of unattended inputs.

      Eason, Harter, and White (1969) used the ERP technique to show that alertness and attention could affect pre-decision level neuronal processing. Specifically they showed that attentional alertness could alter neural processing of a visual stimulus as quickly as 200 ms after the presentation of a stimulus. Van Voorhis and Hillyard (1977) showed that covert (in the absence of any overt eye movements) visual selective attention could enhance visual processing starting within about 100 ms after stimulus presentation. Further investigations have shown that the P1, a positive deflection in the visual evoked ERP that peaks around 90-110 ms latency and is maximal at posterior occipital scalp sites, is the earliest visually evoked component to be reliably affected by spatial attention (e.g., Clark & Hillyard, 1996; Luck, Hillyard, Mouloua, Woldorff, Clark, & Hawkins, 1994; Mangun & Hillyard, 1988; 1990, 1991). The P1 component is referred to as a visual sensory component, in that it is evoked by visual stimuli and is sensitive to physical features of the stimulus. Scalp current density mapping and dipole modeling of scalp recorded electrical activity in attention studies have suggested that these P1 attention effects, produced by voluntary spatial selective attention, are generated in lateral extrastriate cortex (Gomez Gonzalez, Clark, Fan, Luck, & Hillyard, 1994; Mangun, Hillyard, & Luck, 1993). Combined ERP and functional neuroimaging studies have provided further evidence that the P1 is generated in the fusiform gyrus of extrastriate cortex in humans (Heinze et al., 1994; Mangun, Hopfinger, Kussmaul, Fletcher, & Heinze, 1997; Woldorff et al., 1997). Many investigations, using multiple disciplines, have thereby converged on the conclusion that voluntary attention can affect neural processing at relatively early levels. However, there are components of the visual ERP that occur earlier than the P1 that are not reliably modulated by selective voluntary attention. The NP80 component, thought to be generated by activity in the striate cortex (area V1), has not been found to be reliably affected by voluntary selective spatial attention (e.g., Clark & Hillyard, 1996). Although some neuroimaging and non-human primate studies have provided evidence for attention-related modulations in the striate visual cortex (e.g., Worden & Schneider, 1996; Motter, 1993), a recent combined neuroimaging and ERP study found that the modulation of activity in striate cortex was related to processing that occurred after the NP80 component (Martinez et al., 1999). This result suggests that modulations of striate cortex happen via feedback pathways, after the initial sensory processing in that region (indexed by the NP80) has completed without being influenced by voluntary spatial attention. While previous research has thus been able to identify the precise stages of processing at which voluntary attention can and cannot affect visual processing, much less research has been devoted to understanding the stage(s) of processing affected by reflexive attentional capture.

      Finally, recent theories of attention suggest that attentional selection cannot adequately be described as either simply early or late (see Pashler, 1998 for a comprehensive discussion). For example, Lavie and Tsal (1994) provided evidence that task difficulty plays a significant role in determining whether behavioral measures show evidence for early or for late selection. Specifically, under high levels of perceptual load, voluntary attention has been shown to act as an early filter, as all available resources are consumed by the difficult task, and unattended information is not completely processed. Under low levels of perceptual load however, attentional resources exceed what is needed to perform the easy perceptual task, and attention may act only at a later stage of processing. Handy and Mangun (2000) recently demonstrated an enhancement of the P1 by voluntary attention under conditions of high perceptual load, and no modulation of the P1 under conditions of low perceptual load. Finally, Lavie (2000) has suggested that in addition to the perceptual difficulty of the task (perceptual load), cognitive load (e.g., working memory resources; task coordination) may also play a significant role in the control of attention.

      Reflexive versus voluntary attention

      Despite the fact that both voluntary and reflexive attention influence the focus of our mind’s eye, evidence supports a strong distinction between these two attention systems. For instance, compared to voluntary attention, reflexive attention is engaged more rapidly, is more resistant to interference, and dissipates more quickly (e.g., Cheal & Lyon, 1991; Jonides, 1981; Müller & Rabbitt, 1989; Posner, Nissen, & Ogden, 1978). In addition, the effects of reflexive attention change significantly as time passes after an attention-capturing event (i.e., a non-predictive exogenous cue), whereas voluntary attention is more stable over time. Unlike voluntary attention, reflexive attention results in a biphasic effect on response times. Specifically, the initial facilitation that follows reflexive attentional capture is followed by a period in which items at the cued location are actually responded to more slowly (i.e., Inhibition of Return – IOR, Posner et al., 1985; Posner & Cohen, 1984). In addition, neuropsychological studies indicate that reflexive attention may be controlled by partially or wholly separate neural mechanisms from those involved in voluntary attention (see Rafal, 1996, for review).

      While there has been an abundance of research into the neural mechanisms of voluntary attention (including work in both humans and non-human animals), relatively little is known about the neural consequences of reflexive attention. In part, this may reflect an implicit assumption that the reflexive system is somehow more basic than the voluntary system, and that voluntary attention works through the same mechanisms as reflexive attention, merely adding on higher-order control mechanisms. As Briand (1998) points out, however, reflexive and voluntary attention have been shown to have distinct properties and qualitative differences, which make such assumptions tenuous. For example, evidence suggests that reflexive attention performs a role in feature integration, while voluntary attention alone does not (Briand, 1998; Briand & Klein, 1987). Therefore, reflexive attention mechanisms cannot be completely understood on the basis of inferences drawn from the results of voluntary attention studies.

      The relative lack of neurophysiological studies of reflexive attention may also be due in part to the difficulty of attributing neural activity to specific events when those events (e.g., reflexive cue and target) occur very closely in time, as is typical in studies of reflexive attention. Specifically, two or more events occurring in a short period of time may produce partially overlapping patterns of neural activity recorded at the scalp (and in neuronal recordings in animals). Certain precautions therefore need to be taken to ensure that electrophysiological recordings will not be contaminated by the overlapping activities. If successive events are separated by only a brief interval, and if the interval is constant across all trials, it is not possible to completely differentiate the event-related activity from the two events. This is because any activity time-locked to the second event will also be time-locked to the first event, since the second event itself is perfectly time-locked to the first event. If, on the other hand, the interval between events can be varied over a range of time, then it may be possible, via signal analysis methods, to obtain distinct ERPs for both events. This procedure of randomly varying the interstimulus intervals can be quite effective if (1) the range of ISI variation is larger than the period of the slowest component of interest, and (2) if there is a sufficiently long interval between the events, such that the processing of one event finishes before the processing of the next begins. However, in studies of reflexive attention, this second requirement often cannot be met, due to the transient nature of reflexive attentional capture, which requires very short interstimulus intervals to be used. Therefore, even with a randomly varying interval, the average ERPs from both events still contain some overlapping activity, because the events generating them (i.e., reflexive cues and subsequent targets), are only a few tens of milliseconds offset from one another. Within the past decade, however, advances in signal processing techniques have provided scientists with the tools (e.g., the adjacent response filter of Woldorff, 1993) to dissociate overlapping patterns of brain activity, allowing the investigation of neural activity related to specific events occurring with short interstimulus intervals. As described previously (Woldorff, 1993), this procedure estimates overlapping activity by convolving the recorded ERP waveforms with the actual distribution of the interstimulus intervals. For example, the overlap from the cue processing onto the target ERP can be estimated by convolving the cue ERP with the event distribution specifying the interstimulus intervals at which it preceded the targets. This estimate of overlap from the cue may then be subtracted from the recorded ERP to the target, providing a better estimate of the target related activity. This better estimate of the target activity can then be convolved with the interstimulus interval distribution to provide an estimate of overlap from the target onto the preceding cue ERP. This procedure is then iterated using the new estimates of the cue and target waveforms until a stable solution is arrived at (when successive iterations no longer produce any differences in the estimates).

      The following experiments investigated the effects that reflexive attentional capture has on subsequent visual processing: specifically, whether reflexive attention can modulate neural processing within early sensory processing stages, as early as does voluntary attention. These experiments examined processing at both short interstimulus intervals and at longer interstimulus intervals to investigate the early facilitatory effects of reflexive attention as well as the later inhibitory effect (IOR). Finally, across the experiments, we were able to examine the effects of reflexive attention within different tasks in order to examine whether simple task changes would affect the automatic effects of reflexive attention.

      The Effects of Reflexive Attentional Capture on Visual Processing: ERP Studies

      Part 1: Reflexive attention in a difficult discrimination task

      Recently, we investigated the effects of reflexively oriented attention on visual processing by measuring neural activity in human subjects using the ERP method (Hopfinger & Mangun, 1998). This study used a paradigm that was known to produce a reflexive shift of attention, in order to investigate the effects that attentional capture has on the processing of subsequent visual events (i.e., events occurring after attention has been captured by a brief visual transient - the reflexive cue). Similar to the early versus late selection debate discussed above, this study was motivated in part by the question of whether reflexive attention would be able to affect visual processing as early as does voluntary attention.

      ERPs were recorded from human subjects while they performed a discrimination task in which non-predictive cues preceded each target stimulus. Subjects maintained fixation upon a centrally located cross on a computer monitor throughout all trials (see Figure 3). On either side of fixation, four small white dots demarcated the comers of an imaginary rectangle 1.03 degrees wide and 1.37 degrees tall. The center of each imaginary rectangle was located 1.5 degrees above and 6.4 degrees lateral to fixation. The beginning of each trial commenced with the four dots on one side of fixation (equally probable on the left or right of fixation) being extinguished for 34 ms and then reappearing, giving the subjective impression of a blinking of one set of dots. This cue was used in order to minimize neuronal refractory effects and overlap from the cue ERP onto the target-evoked ERP, while still producing an effective sensory cue. Subjects were informed that the cue would be completely non-predictive of the location of the subsequent target, as described below. After a variable interval (ranging randomly from either 34-234 or 566-766 ms; rectangular distribution within each range), a vertical target bar was flashed to one side of fixation, centered between the dots on that side. The location of the target bar was equally probable on the right or left of fixation and was equally likely to be at the same versus the opposite hemifield location as the preceding cue. The target remained on the screen for 50 ms, and was either a short (1.8 deg by .69 deg) or tall (2.3 deg by .69 deg) vertical bar. Subjects performed a height discrimination judgment in which they were required to rapidly press one button for short bars or a different button for tall bars. The intertrial interval was varied randomly between 1500 – 2000 ms, and each block consisted of 40 trials wherein short (34-234) and long (566-766 ms) cue-to-target intervals (interstimulus interval, ISI) were randomly intermixed. Each block was 90-100 seconds long and each subject performed 80 blocks, 40 on each of 2 separate testing days. Catch trials, during which no target appeared, accounted for 20% of the trials and were included in order to reduce the likelihood of subjects forming temporal expectancies and to prevent anticipatory responses.

      Figure 3 Discrimination Experiment. Example of stimulus display showing a trial with a target occurring at a cued location (left column) and a trial where this target is occurring at an uncued location (right column). The cue was a 34-msec offset and then re-appearance of the 4 dots on one side of fixation. The cue-to-target inter-stimulus-interval (ISI) was randomly varied over a short (34-234 msec) or long (566-766 msec) interval. The target was a vertical bar presented for 50 msec. The participants’ task was to judge whether the bar was the tall or short bar, and press the appropriate button as quickly as possible.

      Data from 8 healthy, right-handed, volunteers (4 female), ages 18-30, with normal or corrected-to-normal vision, were analyzed. Although the cue was subtle and did not overlap on the retina with the target, the scalp-recorded neural responses to the cue still overlapped with the responses recorded to the target stimulus, especially at the shortest cue-to-target intervals. In order to eliminate the possibility that any differences in early ERP components might be due to overlapping neural activity produced by the cues, the adjacent response (Adjar) filter method (Woldorff, 1993) was employed to remove confounding potentials generated by the lateralized cues. As described briefly earlier, this procedure iteratively estimates and subtracts the overlap from adjacent events (i.e., cue and target) until the estimates of the cue and target overlap do not change over successive iterations, at which point overlap is considered to have been removed from the original waveforms (see Hopfinger & Mangun, 1998, for more details on how this procedure was applied to the present data). Physiological measures were gathered by recording from 64 electrodes distributed over the scalp of each volunteer.

      In agreement with prior reaction time (RT) studies using non-predictive peripheral visual transients (Jonides, 1981; Miller, 1989; Müller & Rabbitt, 1989; Theeuwes, 1991), subjects in the present experiment responded reliably faster to targets at the cued location versus the uncued location (517 ms versus 533 ms, respectively) for the short cue-to-target intervals (main effect of cueing F(l,7) = 24.41, p < .01; ANOVA factors were Cueing (cued versus uncued location targets), visual field of target (right versus left hemifield), and Subjects (N = 8)). At the long ISIs, there were, however, no differences in reaction times between targets at cued and uncued locations (546 versus 544 ms). Hence, classical inhibition of return (IOR), wherein RTs are typically slowed at cued locations at long ISIs (Posner & Cohen, 1984), was not observed, a result we attribute to the use of a discrimination task, known to reduce the likelihood of RT inhibition (e.g., Pratt, 1995; Terry, Valdes, & Neill, 1994). No other significant main effects or interactions were found in the RT data.

      Effects on perceptual level processing

      When the cue-to-target ISI was short (34-234 ms), targets at the cued location elicited visual P1 ERP components with significantly enhanced amplitudes compared to targets at an uncued location (F(l,7) = 15.15, p < .01; Figure 4, top left). For the ANOVA analysis of ERP data in the 90-140 ms latency range (corresponding to the P1 component), the following factors were included in addition to those used above: Electrode locations (medial versus lateral scalp locations), and hemisphere of electrodes (right versus left scalp locations). The occipital electrodes included in the analyses were T5, T6, OL, and OR. OL and OR are located midway between T5 and O1, and T6 and O2, respectively, of the International 10-20 system of electrode placement (Jasper, 1958). At the longer cue-to-target ISIs (566-766 ms), however, the effect of the cues on the P1 component was reversed (Figure 4, bottom left) -- targets at cued-locations now elicited significantly smaller responses than targets at uncued-locations (F(1,7) = 13.68, p < .01). This reduction in P1 amplitude at long ISIs cannot be attributed to a simple neuronal refractory effect between cue and target because at short ISIs, when such an effect would be greatest, the pattern is opposite to that predicted by neuronal refractoriness.

      Figure 4 Discrimination Experiment. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to target bar stimuli, collapsed over contralateral scalp sites (data from the left hemisphere for right visual field targets combined with data from the right hemisphere for left visual field targets). The scalp location of electrodes OL/OR (left column) and Pz (right column), are indicated in Figures 5 and 6, respectively. Cued-location target ERPs are indicated by solid lines; uncued-location target ERPs are represented by dashed lines. Top: Shaded gray areas highlight the significant effects that reflexive attention had on the contralateral P1 component (left column) and the P300 component (right column) at the short cue-to-target ISIs. Bottom: Shaded gray area highlights the effect that reflexive attention had on the contralateral P1 component (left column) at the long cue-to-target ISIs. There was no significant difference in the P300 at the long ISIs (right column).

      By investigating topographic voltage maps during the time period of the P1 component, one can observe that the location of the maximal response at the scalp corresponding to the P1 component was highly similar for cued versus uncued-location targets (Figure 5). This pattern is consistent with the view that the same type of neural process was evoked in both cases, with the primary difference being the strength of the response. The effect of reflexive spatial attention on the amplitude of the P1 component occurred with little or no change in the waveshape, latency, or scalp distribution of this ERP component, suggesting that reflexive attention modulates the activity level of the sensory P1 generators via a selective sensory gating or gain control of information processing through ascending visual pathways (e.g., Eason, 1981). As mentioned above, the extrastriate-generated P1 component represents the earliest stage of visual processing to be reliably modulated by voluntary spatial attention (e.g., Heinze et al., 1994; Mangun, 1995; Mangun & Hillyard, 1991). Our findings thus indicated that reflexive attention leads to modulations at this same stage of visual cortical processing, although presumably, partially or wholly distinct control circuitry is involved in producing these two attention effects (Kustov & Robinson, 1996; Rafal, 1996; Robinson & Kertzman, 1995).

      Figure 5 Discrimination Experiment. Scalp topographic voltage maps of the time period corresponding to the peak of the P1 component (110-120 msec), collapsed over contralateral and ipsilateral scalp sites and shown from a back view of the head. The left scalp hemisphere of each map represents the ipsilateral hemisphere (data from the left hemisphere for left visual field targets combined with data from the right hemisphere for right visual field targets), while the right scalp hemisphere of each map represents the contralateral hemisphere (data from the left hemisphere for right visual field targets combined with data from the right hemisphere for left visual field targets). The small black dots on each topographic map indicate the location of the electrodes, and all maps are referenced to the right mastoid. Top: At the short ISIs, the cued-location targets (left map) produced a significantly enhanced P1 component relative to uncued-location targets (right map). The distribution of activity across the scalp for the contralateral P1 is similar for cued versus uncued location targets over contralateral occipital scalp sites, but the amplitude of the P1 component is significantly larger for cued-location targets compared to uncued-location targets at these short ISIs. Bottom: At the long ISIs, the cued location targets (left map) produced a significantly reduced P1 component relative to uncued-location targets (right map). Again, the distribution of activity was very similar, with the main difference being the strength of the P1.

      Effects on cognitive level processing

      In order to track the fates of signals for cued and uncued targets, we evaluated longer-latency ERP components known to reflect higher-order aspects of target processing. One such component of the ERP that has been used in conjunction with RTs to examine human information processing is the P300 component (latency 250-500 ms, maximal over central and central-parietal scalp sites) (e.g., Duncan-Johnson & Donchin, 1982). The amplitude of the P300 is not directly tied to RTs, but instead indexes aspects of information processing such as expectancy and perceived stimulus relevance. The P300 is typically larger to infrequent, unexpected, stimuli (Donchin, 1981). For the analyses of the ERP data in the 250-500 ms latency range (corresponding to the P300 component), ANOVA factors were those listed above for the analysis of the P1, except that only midline scalp electrodes were analyzed here (Cz and Pz), and thus the ANOVA factor of hemisphere of recording was not included. In the present study, the P300 was enlarged to cued-location targets, but only at the short cue-to-target ISIs (F(l,7) = 31.41, p < .001; Figure 4 upper right and Figure 6 top). The P300 to cued and uncued targets did not differ at long ISIs (Figure 4 lower right and Figure 6 bottom).

      Figure 6 Discrimination Experiment. Scalp topographic voltage maps of the time period corresponding to the peak of the P300 component (250-300 msec), collapsed over contralateral and ipsilateral scalp sites and shown from a back view of the head. The left scalp hemisphere of each map represents the ipsilateral hemisphere (data from the left hemisphere for left visual field targets combined with data from the right hemisphere for right visual field targets), while the right scalp hemisphere of each map represents the contralateral hemisphere (data from the left hemisphere for right visual field targets combined with data from the right hemisphere for left visual field targets). The distribution of activity across the scalp is similar for cued and uncued location targets, but the amplitude of the P300 is significantly larger for cued-location targets compared to uncued-location targets at short ISIs (top). There was no significant difference in the P300 amplitude at the long ISIs (bottom).

      The P300 component of the ERP has been shown to be an index of a subject’s cognitive response to a stimulus (e.g., Donchin, 1981). One factor that affects the amplitude of the P300 component is stimulus frequency (e.g., Duncan- Johnson & Donchin, 1982). Specifically, less frequent stimuli elicit larger amplitude P300s. In the present study however, stimuli were equally frequent at the cued-location and at the uncued-location, and yet cued-location target stimuli elicited larger P300s than uncued location target stimuli at the short ISIs. Therefore, the observed difference is likely due to a different factor that affects the amplitude of the P300. The P300 is also sensitive to the significance, or perceived importance, of the stimulus (Johnson, 1988). For example, when monetary payoffs are manipulated, stimuli associated with high risk elicit larger P300s than do stimuli with low risk (e.g., Johnston, 1979; Tueting & Sutton, 1973). In addition, in comparison to neutral stimuli, stimuli rated as strongly positive or negative elicit larger P300s (Johnston, Burleson, & Miller, 1987). The enhancement of the P300 found in this experiment, therefore, may be due to a difference in the perceived relevance of the stimuli. Since both cued and uncued location stimuli were known by the subjects to be equally important to the task, it is likely that the difference was generated by automatic mechanisms. Specifically, reflexive attention may act to tag the cued-location as being of higher value. There were no differences in the P300 at the long ISIs, however, suggesting that this tagging of the cued location is transient, and affects processing for only a short period of time after the attention-capturing event.

      An alternate account of these findings is that the P300 effect was simply a result of the enhanced sensory processing (the P1 effect). There is evidence that the P300 may increase as a function of loudness under certain conditions (Johnson & Donchin, 1978), and this may extend to intense stimuli in other modalities as well. However, this view would not account for the pattern of data collected here. If the P300 amplitudes in this experiment were simply a function of earlier sensory processing, then the P1 and P300 effects should have covaried. In this experiment, however, there was a significant reduction of the P1 at the long ISIs for cued-location targets compared to uncued-location targets, but there was no difference in the P300 component at those ISIs. Furthermore, in a review of the properties that affect P300 amplitude, Johnson (1988) suggested that the observed effects of stimulus intensity on the P300 were likely due to the ability of intense stimuli to summon attention to high-value (i.e., potentially important) stimuli, rather than being due to a simple linear relation between intensity and P300 amplitude. Together with the fact that the P1 and P300 effects did not covary across the conditions in our study, this suggests that the P300 effects we observed were not simply a result of the P1 effects.

      Although more research needs to be done to completely understand the cognitive process(es) underlying the P300, the present results do indicate a key function of reflexive orienting. At short ISIs, reflexive attention not only facilitates processing in sensory cortex (i.e., the P1 modulation), but also leads cued-location stimuli to be treated differently at higher stages of stimulus evaluation. Additionally, because there was no P300 difference observed at long ISIs, it is possible to conclude that subjects in the present task were not invoking voluntary orienting toward the task-irrelevant cue. If they had done so, a difference in P300 amplitude would have been expected at the long ISIs as well. These findings suggest that very shortly after a sensory stimulus, reflexive orienting results in the stimulated location being briefly tagged as being more relevant than other locations in the environment.

      Part 2: Reflexive attention in a simple detection task

      As mentioned above, recent studies have shown that task demands can influence the P1 attention effects of voluntary attention (Eimer, 1994; Handy & Mangun, 2000). If the P1 attention effect we observed previously (Hopfinger & Mangun, 1998) was truly due to automatic reflexive attention mechanisms, then it should appear regardless of the task demands. Specifically, our initial experiment utilized a difficult discrimination task. Behavioral studies of reflexive attention have shown that performing a discrimination task can produce different patterns of behavioral effects than when performing simple detection tasks with the identical stimuli (Danziger & Kingstone, 1999; Klein & Taylor, 1994). Such results suggest an interaction between reflexive attention and task parameters. Indeed, inhibition of return has typically been more difficult to obtain in discrimination tasks compared to detection tasks (see Klein, 2000 for review). In order to investigate these issues, and to determine if the effects we previously obtained were truly automatic reflexive attention effects, we recently performed a study (Hopfinger & Mangun, 2001) in which participants performed a simple detection task with the same stimuli we used previously.

      All stimuli were identical to our earlier study (Hopfinger & Mangun, 1998), but the task was changed to a simple detection task in which subjects were required to rapidly press a button with their index finger as soon as the bar was detected (the size of the bar was task-irrelevant in the present study). Subjects were informed that the cue would be completely non-predictive of the location of the subsequent target, and were instructed not to attend voluntarily to either location. Subjects performed the same number of trials as in the original experiment. All recording and analysis procedures were identical to those described above (Hopfinger & Mangun, 1998). Data from 8 subjects (2 female; ages 19-28) were individually filtered with the Adjar algorithm. The only difference in the statistical analyses was that in this experiment the P300 occurred earlier than in our previous study, and therefore the latency range of 200-400 ms was used to measure this component.

      Subjects in the present experiment were significantly faster in responding to targets at the cued location compared to the uncued location (282 ms vs. 290 ms; p < 05) at short cue-to-target ISIs (F(1,7) = 7.63, p < .05). At short ISIs, the P1 component was significantly enhanced for stimuli occurring at the same location as the previous non-predictive cue compared to stimuli at the uncued location (0.79 μV vs. 0.31 μV; F(1,7) = 7.92, p < .05; Figure 7 upper left). The P300 component to targets was also enhanced for cued-location targets compared to uncued-location targets (2.41 μV vs. 1.69 μV, F(1,7) = 44.54, p < 001; Figure 7 upper right). The present results strengthen our claim that these enhancements of processing are due to reflexive attention, not task related mechanisms.

      Figure 7 Detection Experiment. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to target bar stimuli at the short cue-to-target ISIs, collapsed over contralateral scalp sites (data from the left hemisphere for right visual field targets combined with data from the right hemisphere for left visual field targets). Top: Shaded gray areas highlight the effects that reflexive attention had on the contralateral P1 component (left column) and the P300 component (right column). At the short cue-to-target ISIs, cued-location targets (solid lines) elicited significantly enhanced P1 and P300 components compared to uncued-location targets (dashed lines). Bottom: At the long cue-to-target ISIs, there were no significant differences between cued- and uncued-location targets in either the P1 (left column) or P300 components (right column).

      At longer cue-to-target ISIs (566-766 ms), RTs were slower at the cued location than at the uncued location (290 ms vs. 277 ms; F(1,7) = 8.37, p < .05). If subjects had voluntarily attended to the cued location, RTs should have been faster at the cued location at the longer ISIs as well. Thus, this demonstration of IOR in the present study is relevant for our contention that voluntary

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