Perceived levels of environmental unpredictability and changes in visual attention mechanisms in adults

Selective attention mechanisms change in response to variations in sensory experiences and environmental demands. In other words, they are influenced not only by favorable contextual experiences but also by unfavorable ones. Therefore, exposure to environmental unpredictability and chaos could influence selective attention. However, there is a lack of studies directly investigating this relationship. This study examined how household chaos and daily unpredictability relate to selective attention at behavioral and neural levels in young adults (n = 39). Participants were categorized as experiencing high or low unpredictability and chaos based on their scores on respective scales. Using EEG recordings, we measured the amplitude of the N2pc and Pd components, along with accuracy and reaction times, during the performance in two visual search tasks that varied in the level of interference from distracting stimuli (presence vs. absence of a color singleton distractor). The results revealed differences in neural activity related to unpredictability but not chaos. Specifically, in the high-interference visual search task, both groups exhibited an N2pc component associated with the singleton distractor, reflecting attentional capture by distracting information. However, the high-unpredictability group showed a larger N2pc amplitude associated with the target and a larger Pd amplitude associated with the distractor. These findings suggest greater engagement of reactive attentional resources to suppress distractors and select the target, and support hypotheses suggesting that adverse contexts involving unpredictability or chaos relate to changes in how individuals process distracting or irrelevant information.