Focal Distraction: Spatial Shifts of Attentional Focus Are Not Required for Contingent Capture

Contingent capture occurs when distractors that share the target's defining attribute capture attention and slow down target identification. This slowdown has been attributed to an involuntary attentional shift to the location of a pertinent distractor. The present study examined an additional...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 2003-02, Vol.29 (1), p.78-91
Main Authors: Ghorashi, S. M. Shahab, Zuvic, Samantha M, Visser, Troy A. W, Lollo, Vincent Di
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activity levels. Psychomotricity
Analysis of Variance
Attention
Attention - physiology
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive Processes
Cognitive Processing Speed
Distraction
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Models, Psychological
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Perception
Perceptual Masking
Psychological tests
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychophysics
Reaction Time
Reaction Time - physiology
Set (Psychology)
Space Perception
Stimulus Parameters
Vigilance. Attention. Sleep
Vision
Visual Perception
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Summary:Contingent capture occurs when distractors that share the target's defining attribute capture attention and slow down target identification. This slowdown has been attributed to an involuntary attentional shift to the location of a pertinent distractor. The present study examined an additional source of delay: the time spent in processing pertinent distractors. In 7 experiments, distractors were presented at fixation, and targets were presented either at fixation or peripherally. Contingent capture invariably occurred when a salient distractor was presented within about 600 ms before the target, even when spatial shifts in attentional focus were ruled out. A 2-stage model is proposed in which stimuli must pass an input filter tuned to the target's defining attribute before gaining access to a high-level stage that is unavailable while a distractor is being processed.
ISSN:0096-1523
1939-1277
DOI:10.1037/0096-1523.29.1.78