Havlíček Ondřej, Müller Hermann J, Wykowska Agnieszka
Department of Psychology, General and Experimental Psychology Unit, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Leopoldstr. 13, 80802, Munich, Germany.
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstraße 1a, 04303, Leipzig, Germany.
Psychol Res. 2019 Feb;83(1):159-174. doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1129-x. Epub 2018 Dec 26.
Distracting sensory events can capture attention, interfering with the performance of the task at hand. We asked: is our attention captured by such events if we cause them ourselves? To examine this, we employed a visual search task with an additional salient singleton distractor, where the distractor was predictable either by the participant's own (motor) action or by an endogenous cue; accordingly, the task was designed to isolate the influence of motor and non-motor predictive processes. We found both types of prediction, cue- and action-based, to attenuate the interference of the distractor-which is at odds with the "attentional white bear" hypothesis, which states that prediction of distracting stimuli mandatorily directs attention towards them. Further, there was no difference between the two types of prediction. We suggest this pattern of results may be better explained by theories postulating general predictive mechanisms, such as the framework of predictive processing, as compared to accounts proposing a special role of action-effect prediction, such as theories based on optimal motor control. However, rather than permitting a definitive decision between competing theories, our study highlights a number of open questions, to be answered by these theories, with regard to how exogenous attention is influenced by predictions deriving from the environment versus our own actions.
分散注意力的感官事件会吸引注意力，干扰手头任务的执行。我们提出疑问：如果是我们自己引发这些事件，我们的注意力会被它们吸引吗？为了探究这一点，我们采用了一项视觉搜索任务，其中有一个额外的显著单独干扰项，该干扰项可以由参与者自身的（运动）动作或内源性线索预测；相应地，该任务旨在分离运动和非运动预测过程的影响。我们发现基于线索和动作的这两种预测类型都会减弱干扰项的干扰——这与“注意力白熊”假说相悖，该假说认为对干扰性刺激的预测必然会将注意力引向它们。此外，这两种预测类型之间没有差异。我们认为，与提出动作效应预测具有特殊作用的理论（如基于最优运动控制的理论）相比，假设存在一般预测机制的理论（如预测处理框架）可能能更好地解释这种结果模式。然而，我们的研究并没有在相互竞争的理论之间做出明确的抉择，而是突出了一些有待这些理论回答的开放性问题，这些问题涉及外部注意力是如何受到源自环境与我们自身动作的预测影响的。
