Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EB, UK.
Department of Communication and Applied Behavioural Science, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Camberley, GU15 4PQ, UK.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2022 Nov;84(8):2444-2460. doi: 10.3758/s13414-022-02560-w. Epub 2022 Sep 22.
Trying to ignore an object can bias attention towards it - a phenomenon referred to as the 'attentional white bear' (AWB) effect. The mechanisms behind this effect remain unclear. On one hand, the AWB may reflect reactive, 'search and destroy' distractor suppression, which directs attention toward irrelevant objects in order to suppress further attention to them. However, another possibility is that the AWB results from failed proactive distractor suppression - attempting to suppress attention to an irrelevant object from the outset may inadvertently result in an attentional shift towards it. To distinguish these two possibilities, we developed a categorical visual search task that addresses limitations present in prior studies. In five experiments (N = 96), participants searched displays of naturalistic stimuli cued only with distractor categories (targets were unknown and unpredictable). We observed an AWB and later attenuated it by presenting a pre-search stimulus, likely disrupting guidance from distractor templates in working memory. We conclude that the AWB resulted from a failure of proactive suppression rather than a search and destroy process.
试图忽略一个物体可能会使注意力偏向它——这一现象被称为“注意白熊”（AWB）效应。这一效应背后的机制尚不清楚。一方面，AWB 可能反映了反应性的、“搜索和破坏”分心抑制，它将注意力引导到不相关的物体上，以抑制对它们的进一步注意。然而，另一种可能性是，AWB 是由于主动分心抑制失败造成的——试图从一开始就抑制对无关物体的注意力，可能会无意中导致注意力转移到它身上。为了区分这两种可能性，我们开发了一个类别视觉搜索任务，该任务解决了先前研究中存在的局限性。在五个实验中（N = 96），参与者在只显示分心物类别的显示中进行搜索（目标是未知和不可预测的）。我们观察到了 AWB，然后通过呈现预搜索刺激来减弱它，这可能会干扰工作记忆中分心模板的引导。我们的结论是，AWB 是由于主动抑制失败而不是搜索和破坏过程造成的。
