Goal-Directed Suppression of Visual Attention [Poster]

Research suggests that active feature suppression could contribute to visual selective attention. For instance, knowing what not to look for benefits visual search, as foreknowledge of or prolonged experience with to-be-ignored features decreases distractor interference. Using a cueing protocol, we investigated whether distractor colors are indeed actively suppressed or simply ignored. First, we ensured that color suppression was not only beneficial, but even necessary to find the targets. Secondly, we compared effects of suppression to that of merely ignoring a task-irrelevant feature. Our participants searched for a negatively defined target, for instance, a non-red horizontal bar, while the actual color of the searched-for target was unknown to the participants. Critically, searching solely for target orientation or for target color was not possible, as each target display contained two lines of the target’s orientation–for instance, two horizontal bars–, one of which had a to-be-ignored color and the other line (the target) had a variable and unknown alternative color. We found that participants were able to search for the negatively defined targets and that “negative” distractor colors were actively suppressed: Search times were significantly slower when a cue with a “negative” color preceded the target at the same position compared to a different position, indicating feature-based suppression. Notably, cues with a task-irrelevant color (that was neither a target nor a distractor color) were simply ignored, indicating a difference between active suppression and passive ignoring. Our results suggest that active suppression is a top-down attentional guidance principle, supporting visual search.

Mar. 14, 2021 — Mar. 16, 2021

63rd Tagung Experimentell arbeitender Psycholog:innen (TeaP)

Online

Ulm, Germany (@Home)