Introspective awareness of oculomotor attentional capture

Recent research has demonstrated that observers can learn to prevent attentional capture by physically salient stimuli. One critical question is how observers learn to avoid capture, particularly in situations where they receive no direct feedback about attentional performance. One possibility is that individuals have some level of introspective awareness of capture when it occurs. Once capture is detected, participants then adjust performance strategies to avoid subsequent attentional capture. It is currently unclear, however, if observers have any introspective awareness of attentional capture when it occurs. In the current study, participants attempted to locate a target shape and ignore a salient distractor. On half of trials, participants were then asked to classify whether their first eye movement was misdirected to the singleton distractor on that trial. The results demonstrated that participants clearly had some level of introspective awareness of attentional capture: Oculomotor capture effects were much larger on "capture" report trials than on "no capture" report trials. Interestingly, there was no evidence that awareness of oculomotor capture prevented subsequent capture by salient items. Future research is needed to definitively determine whether metacognitive awareness can be used as a training tool to prevent capture. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).