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Towards understanding how we pay attention in naturalistic visual search settings

View ORCID ProfileNora Turoman, View ORCID ProfileRuxandra I. Tivadar, Chrysa Retsa, View ORCID ProfileMicah M. Murray, View ORCID ProfilePawel J. Matusz
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.30.229617
Nora Turoman
1The LINE (Laboratory for Investigative Neurophysiology), Department of Radiology, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
2MEDGIFT Lab, Institute of Information Systems, School of Management, HES-SO Valais-Wallis University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, Techno-Pôle 3, 3960 Sierre, Switzerland
3Working Memory, Cognition and Development lab, Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
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Ruxandra I. Tivadar
1The LINE (Laboratory for Investigative Neurophysiology), Department of Radiology, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
4Department of Ophthalmology, Fondation Asile des Aveugles, Lausanne, Switzerland
5Cognitive Computational Neuroscience group, Institute of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, University of Bern, Switzerland
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Chrysa Retsa
1The LINE (Laboratory for Investigative Neurophysiology), Department of Radiology, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
6CIBM Center for Biomedical Imaging, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
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Micah M. Murray
1The LINE (Laboratory for Investigative Neurophysiology), Department of Radiology, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
4Department of Ophthalmology, Fondation Asile des Aveugles, Lausanne, Switzerland
6CIBM Center for Biomedical Imaging, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
7Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
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Pawel J. Matusz
1The LINE (Laboratory for Investigative Neurophysiology), Department of Radiology, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
2MEDGIFT Lab, Institute of Information Systems, School of Management, HES-SO Valais-Wallis University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, Techno-Pôle 3, 3960 Sierre, Switzerland
7Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
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  • For correspondence: pawel.matusz@gmail.com
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Abstract

Research on attentional control has largely focused on single senses and the importance of behavioural goals in controlling attention. However, everyday situations are multisensory and contain regularities, both likely influencing attention. We investigated how visual attentional capture is simultaneously impacted by top-down goals, the multisensory nature of stimuli, and the contextual factors of stimuli’s semantic relationship and temporal predictability. Participants performed a multisensory version of the Folk et al. (1992) spatial cueing paradigm, searching for a target of a predefined colour (e.g. a red bar) within an array preceded by a distractor. We manipulated: 1) stimuli’s goal-relevance via distractor’s colour (matching vs. mismatching the target), 2) stimuli’s multisensory nature (colour distractors appearing alone vs. with tones), 3) the relationship between the distractor sound and colour (arbitrary vs. semantically congruent) and 4) the temporal predictability of distractor onset. Reaction-time spatial cueing served as a behavioural measure of attentional selection. We also recorded 129-channel event-related potentials (ERPs), analysing the distractor-elicited N2pc component both canonically and using a multivariate electrical neuroimaging framework. Behaviourally, arbitrary target-matching distractors captured attention more strongly than semantically congruent ones, with no evidence for context modulating multisensory enhancements of capture. Notably, electrical neuroimaging of surface-level EEG analyses revealed context-based influences on attention to both visual and multisensory distractors, in how strongly they activated the brain and type of activated brain networks. For both processes, the context-driven brain response modulations occurred long before the N2pc time-window, with topographic (network-based) modulations at ~30ms, followed by strength-based modulations at ~100ms post-distractor onset. Our results reveal that both stimulus meaning and predictability modulate attentional selection, and they interact while doing so. Meaning, in addition to temporal predictability, is thus a second source of contextual information facilitating goal-directed behaviour. More broadly, in everyday situations, attention is controlled by an interplay between one’s goals, stimuli’s perceptual salience, meaning and predictability. Our study calls for a revision of attentional control theories to account for the role of contextual and multisensory control.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • Small changes to the title. Clarified the aims of the study at the end of the Introduction.

  • Abbreviations
    N2pc
    the N2pc event-related component
    EEG
    Electroencephalography
    ERPs
    Event-Related Potentials
    TAC
    Task-set Contingent Attentional Capture
    MSE
    Multisensory Enhancement of Attentional Capture
    SOMs
    Supplementary Online Materials
    TCCV
    target-color cue visual
    NCCV
    nontarget-color cue visual
    TCCAV
    target-color cue audiovisual
    NCCAV
    nontarget-color cue audiovisual
    rmANOVA
    repeated-measures analysis of variance
    GFP
    Global Field Power
    TAAHC
    Topographic Atomize and Agglomerate Hierarchical Clustering
    DAV
    Target Difference, difference between TCCAV and NCCAV conditions
    DV
    Target Difference, difference between TCCV and NCCV conditions
    DO
    Distractor Onset
    MR
    Multisensory Relationship
  • Copyright 
    The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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    Towards understanding how we pay attention in naturalistic visual search settings
    Nora Turoman, Ruxandra I. Tivadar, Chrysa Retsa, Micah M. Murray, Pawel J. Matusz
    bioRxiv 2020.07.30.229617; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.30.229617
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    Towards understanding how we pay attention in naturalistic visual search settings
    Nora Turoman, Ruxandra I. Tivadar, Chrysa Retsa, Micah M. Murray, Pawel J. Matusz
    bioRxiv 2020.07.30.229617; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.30.229617

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