Slippage Theory and the Flanker Paradigm: An Early-Selection Account of Selective Attention Failures

In the flanker paradigm, participants identify a target letter while attempting to ignore an irrelevant flanker. When the identity of this flanker mismatches the target, target identification is slowed (called the flanker compatibility effect). Interestingly, reducing the array set size greatly incr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 2014-06, Vol.40 (3), p.1257-1273
Main Authors: Gaspelin, Nicholas, Ruthruff, Eric, Jung, Kyunghun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activity levels. Psychomotricity
Attention
Attentional Capture
Biological and medical sciences
Color Perception
Compatibility
Discrimination Learning
Experimental psychology
Field Dependence-Independence
Fixation, Ocular
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Identification
Identity
Memory, Short-Term
Orientation
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Psychological Theory
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time
Selective Attention
Set sizes
Theories
Vigilance. Attention. Sleep
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Summary:In the flanker paradigm, participants identify a target letter while attempting to ignore an irrelevant flanker. When the identity of this flanker mismatches the target, target identification is slowed (called the flanker compatibility effect). Interestingly, reducing the array set size greatly increases flanker compatibility effects. This finding inspired 2 prominent explanations: perceptual load (mandatory capacity spillover) and dilution (visual interference). However, an alternative explanation, based on early selection theory and attention capture research, can also explain the data pattern. According to this "slippage" account, observers sometimes accidentally allocate spatial attention to the flanker (see Lachter, Forster, & Ruthruff, 2004), especially when the flanker has the property used to find the target (cf. contingent capture). In Experiments 1 through 4, deterring slippage to the flanker nearly eliminated flanker compatibility effects, even at the low set size. In Experiment 5, promoting slippage to the flanker dramatically enhanced compatibility effects, even at the high set size. Thus, slippage strongly modulates flanker effects and can, by itself, readily explain the impact of set size. The perceptual load and dilution accounts are, at best, incomplete, and, at worst, not needed.
ISSN:0096-1523
1939-1277
DOI:10.1037/a0036179