Rejecting salient distractors: Generalization from experience

Daniel B Vatterott; Michael C Mozer; Shaun P Vecera

doi:10.3758/s13414-017-1465-8

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Rejecting salient distractors: Generalization from experience

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Rejecting salient distractors: Generalization from experience

Daniel B Vatterott, Michael C Mozer and Shaun P Vecera

Attention, perception & psychophysics, Vol.80(2), pp.485-499

02/2018

DOI: 10.3758/s13414-017-1465-8

PMID: 29230673

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https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-017-1465-8View

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Abstract

Distraction impairs performance of many important, everyday tasks. Attentional control limits distraction by preferentially selecting important items for limited-capacity cognitive operations. Research in attentional control has typically investigated the degree to which selection of items is stimulus-driven versus goal-driven. Recent work finds that when observers initially learn a task, the selection is based on stimulus-driven factors, but through experience, goal-driven factors have an increasing influence. The modulation of selection by goals has been studied within the paradigm of learned distractor rejection, in which experience over a sequence of trials enables individuals eventually to ignore a perceptually salient distractor. The experiments presented examine whether observers can generalize learned distractor rejection to novel distractors. Observers searched for a target and ignored a salient color-singleton distractor that appeared in half of the trials. In Experiment 1, observers who learned distractor rejection in a variable environment rejected a novel distractor more effectively than observers who learned distractor rejection in a less variable, homogeneous environment, demonstrating that variable, heterogeneous stimulus environments encourage generalizable learned distractor rejection. Experiments 2 and 3 investigated the time course of learned distractor rejection across the experiment and found that after experiencing four color-singleton distractors in different blocks, observers could effectively reject subsequent novel color-singleton distractors. These results suggest that the optimization of attentional control to the task environment can be interpreted as a form of learning, demonstrating experience's critical role in attentional control.

Young Adult

Attention - physiology

Generalization (Psychology) - physiology

Humans

Female

Male

Reaction Time - physiology

Color Perception

Psychomotor Performance - physiology

Details

Title: Subtitle: Rejecting salient distractors: Generalization from experience
Creators: Daniel B Vatterott - Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, W311 Seashore Hall, Iowa City, IA, 52242-1407, USA
Michael C Mozer - Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, 80309-0430, USA
Shaun P Vecera - Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, W311 Seashore Hall, Iowa City, IA, 52242-1407, USA. shaun-vecera@uiowa.edu
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Attention, perception & psychophysics, Vol.80(2), pp.485-499
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-017-1465-8
PMID: 29230673
NLM abbreviation: Atten Percept Psychophys
ISSN: 1943-3921
eISSN: 1943-393X
Publisher: United States
Grant note: N/A / Nissan Motor Corporation N/A / Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center BCS 11-51209 / National Science Foundation
Language: English
Date published: 02/2018
Academic Unit: Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
Record Identifier: 9984002428902771

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