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Ignoring distractors takes its (memory) toll.

Andrea Dissegna1, Leonardo Chelazzi2, Massimo Turatto1

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Filtering irrelevant stimuli incurs a cognitive cost, impacting attention and response times. This filtering cost is influenced by distractor probability and working memory capacity, revealing adaptive attentional strategies.

Keywords:
Attentional captureDistractor cost, templates for rejectionDistractor frequencyObject-based attention

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Human Attention Studies

Background:

  • Effective attentional selection necessitates filtering out task-irrelevant stimuli.
  • Understanding the cognitive mechanisms and costs associated with attentional filtering is crucial for explaining cognitive performance.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To quantify the cognitive cost of filtering irrelevant stimuli using an object-based attention paradigm.
  • To investigate how factors like distractor probability, number of distractors, and working memory capacity influence filtering costs.

Main Methods:

  • Employed an object-based attention paradigm across four experiments with 320 participants.
  • Participants performed orientation discrimination on Gabor patches, presented alone or with irrelevant distractors.
  • Measured filtering cost as increased response times in mixed blocks versus pure blocks.

Main Results:

  • A robust filtering cost was observed, scaling with distractor probability and the number of distractors (1-4).
  • The cost diminished with random interleaving of eight distractors but reappeared with orderly presentation, suggesting a working memory capacity limit.
  • Filtering cost correlated negatively with interference on distractor-present trials and was independent of distractor semantic content.

Conclusions:

  • Attentional filtering incurs a significant cognitive cost, modulated by distractor characteristics and cognitive load.
  • Working memory plays a key role in managing attentional filtering, with capacity limits leading to strategy shifts.
  • Findings support the active maintenance of distractor templates in working memory during attentional selection.