Stilwell Brad T, Anderson Brian A
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2025 Sep 18. doi: 10.3758/s13415-025-01345-6.
Physically salient stimuli compete for attention but can be suppressed under certain conditions. Highly salient distractors can be suppressed more efficiently than less salient ones. However, the implications for the suppression of salient-but-irrelevant signals on the subjective effort of searching are unclear. On one hand, the neural processes involved in signal suppression may themselves be effortful to engage. On the other hand, the facilitation of search that results from reduced competition from the distractor in the visual system may render the act of searching less mentally effortful. Using a recently developed technique of relating physical effort to the putative mental effort required by different search conditions, we assessed whether observers were more motivated to exert physical effort to avoid the demands of ignoring high- or low-salience distractors. We replicated greater suppression for high- than low-salience distractors and showed that participants exerted more physical effort in exchange for search displays containing the high-salience distractors. However, in a situation where high- and low-salience distractors captured attention equally, participants no longer exhibited this preference. Our results suggest that observers prefer the conditions in which they search most efficiently, even when those conditions involve stronger recruitment of suppressive mechanisms of distractor processing.
物理上显著的刺激会争夺注意力，但在某些条件下可以被抑制。高度显著的干扰物比不太显著的干扰物能更有效地被抑制。然而，抑制显著但不相关信号对主观搜索努力的影响尚不清楚。一方面，信号抑制所涉及的神经过程本身可能需要付出努力才能参与。另一方面，视觉系统中干扰物竞争减少所带来的搜索促进作用可能会使搜索行为在心理上不那么费力。我们使用一种最近开发的将体力与不同搜索条件所需的假定心理努力联系起来的技术，评估了观察者是否更有动力付出体力来避免忽略高显著性或低显著性干扰物的要求。我们重复了对高显著性干扰物的抑制比对低显著性干扰物更强的结果，并表明参与者为了包含高显著性干扰物的搜索显示付出了更多的体力。然而，在高显著性和低显著性干扰物同等程度吸引注意力的情况下，参与者不再表现出这种偏好。我们的结果表明，观察者更喜欢他们搜索效率最高的条件，即使这些条件涉及更强地招募干扰物处理的抑制机制。
