Suppression of overt attentional capture by salient-but-irrelevant color singletons.

ABSTRACT: For more than 2 decades, researchers have debated the nature of cognitive control in the guidance of visual attention. Stimulus-driven theories claim that salient stimuli automatically capture attention, whereas goal-driven theories propose that an individual's attentional control settings determine whether salient stimuli capture attention. In the current study, we tested a hybrid account called the signal suppression hypothesis, which claims that all stimuli automatically generate a salience signal but that this signal can be actively suppressed by top-down attentional mechanisms. Previous behavioral and electrophysiological research has shown that participants can suppress covert shifts of attention to salient-but-irrelevant color singletons. In this study, we used eye-tracking methods

SUBMITTER: Gaspelin N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5182083 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature