The Influence Of Salient Distractor Characteristics And The Statistical Regularity On Attention Suppression Effect

In real life,to find a specific target,people often need to suppress the distractors,especially those unrelated to the task,but that can automatically attract attention,namely the salient distractors.The inhibition of salient distractors can promote rational allocation of attention and produce response gain,which is called the attention inhibition effect.However,which factors affect the attention inhibition effect and how they do so are still under debate.The signal suppression hypothesis holds that the signals generated by the jammer include first-order signals(referring to the features of a single object,such as color and position,etc.),second-order signals(referring to the differences between the features of an object and those of surrounding objects),and overall significance signals(referring to the comprehensive information formed by combining multiple first and second-order signals).These signals will affect attention allocation,and individuals can suppress them to prevent attention from being transferred to salient distractors.The common framework of the attention control model holds that the rules formed by previous trials in the experimental environment,namely the statistical rules,will also affect involuntary attention allocation.To test the above theories,we used the feature search paradigm to explore how first-order signals affect the attentional suppression effect by manipulating the eigenvalues(referring to color and position)and dimensions of the salient distractors(Study 1).In addition,we also manipulated the presentation probability of first-order signals and the combination of two first-order signals to explore how second-order signals affect the attentional suppression effect(Study 2).Study 1 contained two experiments that explored whether and how the color(Experiment 1)and location(Experiment 2)of the salient distractors affected the attentional suppression effect.Experiment 1 was a one-factor within-participant design with three levels(the color of the salient distractors: baseline condition,single color condition,and changing color condition).The results show that the response time for the single color condition was shorter than the baseline condition,which suggested there was an attention inhibition effect based on the specific value(color)of the salient distractors.However,there was no significant difference in response time between the color change condition and the baseline condition,which may suggest that the color change did not promote search.Experiment 2 had the same task as experiment 1,except that the color variation of the salient distractors in experiment 1 was replaced by the position variable.The pattern of results for Experiment 2 were the same as for experiment 1,that is,the reaction time for the single position condition was shorter than the baseline condition,and there was no significant difference between the changing position condition and the baseline condition.These results in line with the signal suppression hypothesis,which indicating that the first-order signals,including the characteristic values of color and position,promote attention selection.Study 2 was aimed at exploring whether and how statistical rules and second-order signals affect the attention suppression effect.A 2(color: red,green)by3(location: high proportion-feature match,high proportion-feature mismatch,low proportion)within-participant designs was conducted in both Experiment 3 and 4.We manipulated the statistical rules by the presentation probability of salient distractors in a specific position,and manipulated second-order signals by the matching between color and a specific position.Experiment 3 showed that,regardless of the matching design,the response time was shorter when salient distractors were placed in the high-proportion position than in the low-proportion position,which indicates that the statistical law can promote the attentional inhibition effect.More importantly,Experiment 3 found that the response time for the high proportion-feature match position was shorter than the high proportion-feature mismatch position,suggesting that the specific combination of color and position feature,namely the second-order signal,promoted the attentional inhibition effect.To further explore whether the influence of second-order signals on the attentional inhibition effect is regulated by the search strategy,the Experiment 4 was conducted.We changed the search sequence into rectangles and the target into squares,which increased the difficulty of the experiment and encouraged subjects to narrow the attention window and use a more focused search strategy.The pattern of results for Experiment 4 was the same as for Experiment 3,except that the reaction time for each condition in Experiment 4 was longer than the corresponding condition in Experiment 3.These findings suggested that the more difficult task did take longer,but not enough to affect the attention inhibition effect.These results support the signal suppression hypothesis and the common framework of the attention control model.In conclusion,we draw the following conclusions:(1)In the first-order signal,the value of the characteristics(including color and position)of the salient distractors,rather than the dimension of them,will affect the attention suppression effect;(2)statistical rules affect the attention suppression effect;(3)individuals can learn the combination of color and location features to form second-order signals,which also affect the attentional inhibition effect;(4)the more difficult task take a longer searching time,but it is not enough to affect the attention suppression effect of second-order signals.