Irrelevant sights and sounds require spatial suppression: ERP evidence. (17th September 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lunn, Jessica; Berggren, Nick; Ward, Jamie; Forster, Sophie
• Is Part Of: Psychophysiology. Volume 60:Number 3(2023)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2022-09-17
• Subjects: attentional capture -- distraction -- ERPs -- pd -- suppression -- visual search; Psychophysiology -- Periodicals; 612.8
• DOI: 10.1111/psyp.14181
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0048-5772

Abstract

Abstract: Both real‐world experience and behavioral laboratory research suggest that entirely irrelevant stimuli (distractors) can interfere with a primary task. However, it is as yet unknown whether such interference reflects competition for spatial attention – indeed, prominent theories of attention predict that this should not be the case. Whilst electrophysiological indices of spatial capture and spatial suppression have been well‐investigated, experiments have primarily utilized distractors which share a degree of task‐relevance with targets, and are limited to the visual domain. The present research measured behavioral and ERP responses to test the ability of salient yet entirely task‐irrelevant visual and auditory distractors to compete for spatial attention during a visual task, while also testing for potentially enhanced competition from multisensory distractors. Participants completed a central letter search task, while ignoring lateralized visual (e.g., image of a dog), auditory (e.g., barking), or multisensory (e.g., image + barking) distractors. Results showed that visual and multisensory distractors elicited a PD component indicative of active lateralized suppression. We also establish for the first time an auditory analog of the PD component, the PAD, elicited by auditory and multisensory distractors. Interestingly, there was no evidence to suggest enhanced ability of multisensory distractors to compete for attentional selection, despite previous proposals of a "special" saliency status for such items. Our findings hence suggest that irrelevant multisensory and unisensory distractors are similarly capable of eliciting a spatial "attend‐to‐me" signal – a precursor of spatial attentional capture – but at least in the present data set did not elicit full spatial attentional capture. Abstract : Our research speaks to two theoretical debates; whether entirely task‐irrelevant stimuli can compete for spatial attention, and the role of endogenous attention in the proposed special saliency status of multisensory stimuli. We demonstrate that irrelevant visual and multisensory distractors elicit an ERP component indicative of active spatial suppression (PD ) and establish an auditory analog of this component (PAD ). We also find no evidence of an enhanced ability of multisensory distractors to compete for spatial attention.