Abstract
It is commonly assumed that salient singletons generate an “attend-to-me signal” which causes suppression to develop over time, eventually preventing capture. Despite this assumption and the name “singleton suppression,” a causal link between salience and suppression has not yet been clearly established. We point out the plausibility of a simple alternative mechanism: distractors might be suppressed because they are distractors rather than targets, even when non-salient. To look for evidence of salience-based suppression, we had participants search for a target shape among distractors, which sometimes included irrelevant-colored distractors. The critical manipulation was whether the irrelevant-colored distractor was salient (a color singleton) or non-salient (three non-target colored shapes; a triplet). On 30% of trials, probe letters were presented briefly inside each shape and participants were to report those letters. Probe recall below baseline indicates suppression. Experiment 1 showed that suppression was not triggered any more strongly by salient distractors (singletons) than by non-salient distractors (triplets). Experiment 2 showed that strong suppression effects developed rapidly even in the absence of salient singletons. These findings raise the thus far neglected question of whether salience plays any role in suppression.
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Notes
In many studies, the authors mentioned that singletons produce an attend-to-me signal and are suppressed, but without explicitly describing the underlying mechanism that produced the suppression.
Following Gaspelin et al., (2015, Experiment 2), we used setsize 6. This setsize has consistently demonstrated suppression in studies by Gaspelin and his colleagues (2015, 2017). In a notable exception to this pattern, Wang and Theeeuwes (2020) found suppression at setsize 4, but not setsize 6 or 10. Stilwell and Gaspelin (in press) recently pointed out the possibility of a floor effect with large setsizes, making it difficult to observe true suppression effects. When Stilwell and Gaspelin addressed the floor effect issue, they found suppression at setsize 10 in three different experiments.
We first calculated the recall accuracy for each probe location on each trial. Then, for each condition, we averaged the probe recall accuracy across all probe locations corresponding to that condition. For instance, in triplet trials, there were three probe letters at the three locations forming the triplet. Recalling one of these three probe letters would yield 33% accuracy, recalling two would yield 67% accuracy, and recalling all three would yield 100% accuracy.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Nicholas Gaspelin for providing colors and instructions of his study and for comments on an earlier draft. We also thank Steven Luck and Dirk Kerzel for helpful feedback. We are also grateful for Megan Griffin’s assistance in data collection. The study was not preregistered but the original data are available at https://osf.io/76wqk/
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To support goal-oriented behaviors, it is critical to resist attention capture by irrelevant distractors. Studies of attention capture have provided two competing views: one says that stimuli capture attention based on salience, and another says that they capture attention based on relevance. To resolve this debate, it has been proposed that salient stimuli attract attention bottom-up but can be suppressed top-down. Our study questions the core assumption of a causal linkage between salience and suppression. The findings have the potential to increase our understanding of attention allocation and how to successfully avoid distraction in real-world scenarios (e.g., driving).
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Lien, MC., Ruthruff, E. & Hauck, C. On preventing attention capture: Is singleton suppression actually singleton suppression?. Psychological Research 86, 1958–1971 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01599-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01599-y