Investigating attentional control sets: evidence for the compilation of multi-feature control sets

Top-down control over stimulus-driven attentional capture, as postulated by the contingent capture hypothesis, has been a topic of lively scientific debate for a number of years now. According to the latter hypothesis, a stimulus has to match the feature of a top-down established control set in orde...

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Main Authors: Merz, S, Beege, F, Schöpper, L-M, Spence, CJ, Frings, C
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: Springer 2022
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author Merz, S
Beege, F
Schöpper, L-M
Spence, CJ
Frings, C
author_facet Merz, S
Beege, F
Schöpper, L-M
Spence, CJ
Frings, C
author_sort Merz, S
collection OXFORD
description Top-down control over stimulus-driven attentional capture, as postulated by the contingent capture hypothesis, has been a topic of lively scientific debate for a number of years now. According to the latter hypothesis, a stimulus has to match the feature of a top-down established control set in order to be selected automatically. Today, research on the topic of contingent capture has focused mostly on the manipulation of only a single feature separating the target from the distractors (the selection feature). The research presented here examined the compilation of top-down attentional control sets having multiple selection features. We report three experiments in which the feature overlap between the distractor and the top-down sets was manipulated on different perceptual features (e.g., colour, orientation and location). Distractors could match three, two or one of the features of the top-down sets. In line with our hypotheses, the strength of the distractor interference effects decreased linearly as the feature overlap between the distractor and the participants' top-down sets decreased. These results therefore suggest a decline in the efficiency with which distractors involuntarily capture attention as the target-similarity decreases. The data support the idea of multi-feature attentional control sets and are discussed in light of prominent contemporary theories of visual attention.
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spelling oxford-uuid:c470390b-c1cf-4a67-8904-25b127459b732023-06-19T08:45:46ZInvestigating attentional control sets: evidence for the compilation of multi-feature control setsJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:c470390b-c1cf-4a67-8904-25b127459b73EnglishSymplectic ElementsSpringer2022Merz, SBeege, FSchöpper, L-MSpence, CJFrings, CTop-down control over stimulus-driven attentional capture, as postulated by the contingent capture hypothesis, has been a topic of lively scientific debate for a number of years now. According to the latter hypothesis, a stimulus has to match the feature of a top-down established control set in order to be selected automatically. Today, research on the topic of contingent capture has focused mostly on the manipulation of only a single feature separating the target from the distractors (the selection feature). The research presented here examined the compilation of top-down attentional control sets having multiple selection features. We report three experiments in which the feature overlap between the distractor and the top-down sets was manipulated on different perceptual features (e.g., colour, orientation and location). Distractors could match three, two or one of the features of the top-down sets. In line with our hypotheses, the strength of the distractor interference effects decreased linearly as the feature overlap between the distractor and the participants' top-down sets decreased. These results therefore suggest a decline in the efficiency with which distractors involuntarily capture attention as the target-similarity decreases. The data support the idea of multi-feature attentional control sets and are discussed in light of prominent contemporary theories of visual attention.
spellingShingle Merz, S
Beege, F
Schöpper, L-M
Spence, CJ
Frings, C
Investigating attentional control sets: evidence for the compilation of multi-feature control sets
title Investigating attentional control sets: evidence for the compilation of multi-feature control sets
title_full Investigating attentional control sets: evidence for the compilation of multi-feature control sets
title_fullStr Investigating attentional control sets: evidence for the compilation of multi-feature control sets
title_full_unstemmed Investigating attentional control sets: evidence for the compilation of multi-feature control sets
title_short Investigating attentional control sets: evidence for the compilation of multi-feature control sets
title_sort investigating attentional control sets evidence for the compilation of multi feature control sets
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AT fringsc investigatingattentionalcontrolsetsevidenceforthecompilationofmultifeaturecontrolsets