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Publication
Attentional suppression is in place before display onset
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Recent studies have shown that observers can learn to suppress a location that is most likely to contain a distractor. The
current study investigates whether the statistically learned suppression is already in place, before, or implemented exactly
at the moment participants expect the display to appear. Participants performed a visual search task in which a distractor
was presented more frequently at the high-probability location (HPL) in a search display. Occasionally, the search display
was replaced by a probe display in which participants needed to detect a probe ofset. The temporal relationship between
the probe display and the search display was manipulated by varying the stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) in the probe
task. In this way, the attentional distribution in space was probed before, exactly at, or after the moment when the search
display was expected to be presented. The results showed a statistically learned suppression at the HPL, as evidenced by
faster and more accurate search when a distractor was presented at this location. Crucially, irrespective of the SOA, probe
detection was always slower at the HPL than at the low-probability locations, indicating that the spatial suppression induced
by statistical learning is proactively implemented not just at the moment the display is expected, but prior to display onset.
We conclude that statistical learning afects the weights within the priority map relatively early in time, well before the
availability of the search display
Description
Keywords
Statistical learning Visual selection Distractor suppression
Citation
Huang, C., Donk, M., & Theeuwes, J. (2023). Attentional suppression is in place before display onset. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 85(4), 1012–1020. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-023-02704-6
Publisher
Springer New York