Distractor probability modulates object-based attentional selection

Efficiently filtering out irrelevant information is critical for adaptive behavior, yet most studies have focused on distractor rejection mechanisms to avoid unwanted spatial attention capture. However, because objects compete for attention regardless of any spatial components, in the present study, we investigated whether spatially invariant object-based attention is modulated by the distractor statistics, irrespective of any spatial components. Participants discriminated a centrally presented target that was superimposed in transparency with a task-irrelevant object distractor or its scrambled version. Experiment 1 showed that both object and scrambled distractors interfered with target discrimination, with higher rate object distractors producing less interference than lower rate ones, suggesting a distractor-rate effect on object-based attention capture. Experiment 2 confirmed a major role of statistical learning in modulating the distractor-rate effect. Experiment 3 excluded the role of low-level perceptual masking or other factors to account for the larger interference from object distractors compared with scrambled distractors. The results showed a strong inversion effect for rare distractors, indicating that the more demanding distractor recognition is, the more processing resources are diverted away from the target analysis. Experiment 4 examined whether distractor filtering is object-specific. In sum, our study demonstrates that spatially invariant object-based attention is modulated by the distractor statistical regularities and that meaningful object distractors, engaging object identification processes, cause larger interference than the corresponding scrambled versions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).