Center for Neural and Cognitive Sciences, School of Medical Sciences, University of Hyderabad.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie University.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2021 Dec;150(12):e57-e65. doi: 10.1037/xge0001061. Epub 2021 Apr 15.
In 2018, Ruthruff and Gaspelin used a modified spatial cuing paradigm in which targets were presented at two locations while abrupt-onset cues could be presented at four locations. They found that performance following cues presented at irrelevant locations was no worse than following no cue or following a centrally presented cue. They concluded, as conveyed by the title of their article (Immunity to Attentional Capture at Ignored Locations) that a spatial attentional control setting had eliminated capture of attention. This conclusion was reached by comparing response time to targets on cue-absent versus irrelevant cues condition. We administered the exact same task in Experiment 1 and observed that responses on irrelevant trials were faster compared with cue absent trials providing support for the "immunity to attention capture claim" made by Ruthruff and Gaspelin (2018). However, cue absent trials may not be the most appropriate baseline condition as they lack the alerting benefit provided by cue-present trials. Thus, equivalent response times (RTs) on trials with absent cues and irrelevant cues observed in Ruthruff and Gaspelin (2018) could have been due to the lack of this alerting benefit. We tested this in Experiment 2 by additionally including a warning beep on every trial as an alerting signal. With this methodological change, we observed that responses were slower on irrelevant trials compared with the cue absent trials suggesting interference from cues at irrelevant locations. This study underscores the importance of using the appropriate baseline while testing attention capture. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
2018 年，Ruthruff 和 Gaspelin 使用了一种改良的空间线索范式，其中目标出现在两个位置，而突发线索可以出现在四个位置。他们发现，在无关位置呈现线索后的表现并不比没有线索或中央呈现线索差。正如他们文章的标题（在忽略的位置对注意捕获的免疫）所传达的那样，他们得出结论，空间注意控制设置消除了对注意力的捕获。这一结论是通过比较有线索和无线索条件下对目标的反应时间得出的。我们在实验 1 中进行了完全相同的任务，观察到在无关试验上的反应比无线索试验更快，这为 Ruthruff 和 Gaspelin（2018）提出的“对注意捕获的免疫”提供了支持。然而，无线索试验可能不是最合适的基线条件，因为它们缺乏线索出现试验提供的警觉益处。因此，Ruthruff 和 Gaspelin（2018）中观察到的无线索试验和无关线索试验的等效反应时间可能是由于缺乏这种警觉益处。我们在实验 2 中通过在每个试验上都增加一个警告蜂鸣作为警报信号来测试这一点。通过这种方法上的改变，我们观察到在无关试验上的反应比无线索试验更慢，这表明来自无关位置的线索会产生干扰。这项研究强调了在测试注意力捕获时使用适当的基线的重要性。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2022 APA，保留所有权利）。
