Psychophysiology - 2022 - Lunn - Irrelevant sights and sounds require spatial suppression ERP evidence.pdf (2.3 MB)
Irrelevant sights and sounds require spatial suppression: ERP evidence
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-10, 04:40 authored by Jessica Lunn, Nick Berggren, Jamie WardJamie Ward, Sophie ForsterSophie ForsterBoth real-world experience and behavioural 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 utilised distractors which share a degree of task-relevance with targets, and are limited to the visual domain. The present research measured behavioural 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 analogue 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 dataset did not elicit full spatial attentional capture.
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Publication status
- Published
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- Published version
Journal
PsychophysiologyISSN
0048-5772Publisher
Wiley-BlackwellExternal DOI
Issue
3Volume
60Page range
e14181 1-15Department affiliated with
- Psychology Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2022-09-06First Open Access (FOA) Date
2022-09-23First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2022-09-05Usage metrics
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