Dynamics of attentional allocation to targets and distractors during visual search
There is much debate about the neural mechanisms that achieve suppression of salient distracting stimuli during visual search. The proactive suppression hypothesis asserts that if exposed to the same distractors repeatedly, these stimuli are actively inhibited before attention can be shifted to them...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2022-12-01
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| Series: | NeuroImage |
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| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811922008801 |
| _version_ | 1811178868812283904 |
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| author | Norman Forschack Christopher Gundlach Steven Hillyard Matthias M. Müller |
| author_facet | Norman Forschack Christopher Gundlach Steven Hillyard Matthias M. Müller |
| author_sort | Norman Forschack |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | There is much debate about the neural mechanisms that achieve suppression of salient distracting stimuli during visual search. The proactive suppression hypothesis asserts that if exposed to the same distractors repeatedly, these stimuli are actively inhibited before attention can be shifted to them. A contrasting proposal holds that attention is initially captured by salient distractors but is subsequently withdrawn. By concurrently measuring stimulus-driven and intrinsic brain potentials in 36 healthy human participants, we obtained converging evidence against early proactive suppression of distracting input. Salient distractors triggered negative event-related potentials (N1pc/N2pc), enhanced the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) relative to non-salient (filler) stimuli, and suppressed contralateral relative to ipsilateral alpha-band amplitudes—three electrophysiological measure associated with the allocation of attention—even though these distractors did not interfere with behavioral responses to the search targets. Furthermore, these measures indicated that both stimulus-driven and goal-driven allocations of attention occurred in conjunction with one another, with the goal-driven effect enhancing and prolonging the stimulus-driven effect. These results provide a new perspective on the traditional dichotomy between bottom-up and top-down attentional allocation. Control experiments revealed that continuous marking of the locations at which the search display items were presented resulted in a dramatic and unexpected conversion of the target-elicited N2pc into a shorter-latency N1pc in association with faster reaction times to the targets. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-11T06:25:17Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-8ce0241729b0468e9f99b19aa9774b71 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1095-9572 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-11T06:25:17Z |
| publishDate | 2022-12-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | NeuroImage |
| spelling | doaj.art-8ce0241729b0468e9f99b19aa9774b712022-12-22T04:40:23ZengElsevierNeuroImage1095-95722022-12-01264119759Dynamics of attentional allocation to targets and distractors during visual searchNorman Forschack0Christopher Gundlach1Steven Hillyard2Matthias M. Müller3Wilhelm Wundt Department of Psychology, University of Leipzig, Germany; Corresponding author.Wilhelm Wundt Department of Psychology, University of Leipzig, GermanyUniversity of California, San Diego, USA; Leibniz Institute of Neurobiology, Magdeburg, GermanyWilhelm Wundt Department of Psychology, University of Leipzig, GermanyThere is much debate about the neural mechanisms that achieve suppression of salient distracting stimuli during visual search. The proactive suppression hypothesis asserts that if exposed to the same distractors repeatedly, these stimuli are actively inhibited before attention can be shifted to them. A contrasting proposal holds that attention is initially captured by salient distractors but is subsequently withdrawn. By concurrently measuring stimulus-driven and intrinsic brain potentials in 36 healthy human participants, we obtained converging evidence against early proactive suppression of distracting input. Salient distractors triggered negative event-related potentials (N1pc/N2pc), enhanced the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) relative to non-salient (filler) stimuli, and suppressed contralateral relative to ipsilateral alpha-band amplitudes—three electrophysiological measure associated with the allocation of attention—even though these distractors did not interfere with behavioral responses to the search targets. Furthermore, these measures indicated that both stimulus-driven and goal-driven allocations of attention occurred in conjunction with one another, with the goal-driven effect enhancing and prolonging the stimulus-driven effect. These results provide a new perspective on the traditional dichotomy between bottom-up and top-down attentional allocation. Control experiments revealed that continuous marking of the locations at which the search display items were presented resulted in a dramatic and unexpected conversion of the target-elicited N2pc into a shorter-latency N1pc in association with faster reaction times to the targets.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811922008801Visual searchBottom-up and goal-driven attentionProactive suppressionReactive suppressionERPN2pc |
| spellingShingle | Norman Forschack Christopher Gundlach Steven Hillyard Matthias M. Müller Dynamics of attentional allocation to targets and distractors during visual search NeuroImage Visual search Bottom-up and goal-driven attention Proactive suppression Reactive suppression ERP N2pc |
| title | Dynamics of attentional allocation to targets and distractors during visual search |
| title_full | Dynamics of attentional allocation to targets and distractors during visual search |
| title_fullStr | Dynamics of attentional allocation to targets and distractors during visual search |
| title_full_unstemmed | Dynamics of attentional allocation to targets and distractors during visual search |
| title_short | Dynamics of attentional allocation to targets and distractors during visual search |
| title_sort | dynamics of attentional allocation to targets and distractors during visual search |
| topic | Visual search Bottom-up and goal-driven attention Proactive suppression Reactive suppression ERP N2pc |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811922008801 |
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