{"title":"Visual Distraction's \"Silver Lining\": Distractor Suppression Boosts Attention to Competing Stimuli.","authors":"Xiaojin Ma, Richard A Abrams","doi":"10.1177/09567976231201853","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Efficient search of the environment requires that people attend to the desired elements in a scene and ignore the undesired ones. Recent research has shown that this endeavor can benefit from the ability to proactively suppress distractors with known features, but little is known about the mechanisms that produce the suppression. We show here in five experiments (<i>N</i> = 120 college students) that, surprisingly, identification of a sought-for target is enhanced when it is grouped with a suppressed distractor compared with when it is in a different perceptual group. The results show that the suppressive mechanism not only downweights undesired elements but also enhances responses to task-relevant elements in competition for attention with the distractor, fine tuning the suppression. The findings extend the understanding of how people efficiently process their visual world.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"1336-1349"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Psychological Science","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231201853","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/10/26 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Efficient search of the environment requires that people attend to the desired elements in a scene and ignore the undesired ones. Recent research has shown that this endeavor can benefit from the ability to proactively suppress distractors with known features, but little is known about the mechanisms that produce the suppression. We show here in five experiments (N = 120 college students) that, surprisingly, identification of a sought-for target is enhanced when it is grouped with a suppressed distractor compared with when it is in a different perceptual group. The results show that the suppressive mechanism not only downweights undesired elements but also enhances responses to task-relevant elements in competition for attention with the distractor, fine tuning the suppression. The findings extend the understanding of how people efficiently process their visual world.
期刊介绍:
Psychological Science, the flagship journal of The Association for Psychological Science (previously the American Psychological Society), is a leading publication in the field with a citation ranking/impact factor among the top ten worldwide. It publishes authoritative articles covering various domains of psychological science, including brain and behavior, clinical science, cognition, learning and memory, social psychology, and developmental psychology. In addition to full-length articles, the journal features summaries of new research developments and discussions on psychological issues in government and public affairs. "Psychological Science" is published twelve times annually.