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Ironic capture: top-down expectations exacerbate distraction in visual search

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Abstract

Ironic processing refers to the phenomenon where attempting to resist doing something results in a person doing that very thing. Here, we report three experiments investigating the role of ironic processing in visual search. In Experiment 1, we informed observers that they could predict the location of a salient color singleton in a visual search task and found that response times were slower in that condition than in a condition where the singleton’s location was random. Experiment 2 used the same experimental design but did not inform participants of the color singleton’s behavior. Experiment 3 showed that the cost in the predictable condition was not due to dual task costs or block order effects and participants attempting to use the strategy showed a larger cost in the predictable condition than those who abandoned using that location foreknowledge. In this case, responses in the predictable color singleton condition were equivalent with the random color singleton condition. This suggests that having more knowledge about an upcoming, salient distractor ironically increases its interfering influence on performance.

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Notes

  1. In the no additional singleton case, a switch is when all the display items changed color from the previous trial.

  2. There was a marginal main effect of color repeat/switch, F(3,42) = 3.316, p = 0.090, \(\eta_{p}^{2}\) = 0.191, with mean RTs being 7 ms slower on switch compared to repeat trials, consistent with previous work (Becker, 2007).

  3. Of course, this hypothesis also assumes that the effect is phenomenologically valid. In our experience of testing the experimental program, we found that this was case, though we have much more experience with these tasks than our participants do. Anecdotal conversations during participant debriefing, however, suggested that participants experienced the same costs.

  4. Color repeat/switch main effect, F(3,42) = 2.599, p = 0.129, \(\eta_{p}^{2}\) = 0.157.

  5. Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

  6. This is not say that there is no inhibitory component of spatial attention. A number of studies have reported evidence of inhibitory mechanisms (Gaspelin, Leonard, & Luck, 2015; 2017; Gaspar & McDonald, 2014; Sawaki & Luck, 2010). Our argument, however, is that these inhibitory mechanisms are not, at least within the given task, capable of being used intentionally. That is, the observers could not voluntarily inhibit an areas of space in advance of to-be-attended stimuli.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Greg Huffman, Jason Rajsic & Jay Pratt

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  1. Greg Huffman
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Correspondence to Greg Huffman.

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Funding

This project was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, in form of a discovery grant to Jay Pratt and a Postgraduate Scholarship-Doctoral to Jason Rajsic.

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The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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All participants provided informed consent before participating in the study.

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Huffman, G., Rajsic, J. & Pratt, J. Ironic capture: top-down expectations exacerbate distraction in visual search. Psychological Research 83, 1070–1082 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0917-z

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