Distractor interference in focused attention tasks is not mediated by attention capture

摘要

Distractor stimuli possessing information that is relevant for a task (henceforth, task-relevant distractors)often interfere with task performance. The interference by task-relevant distractors is observed evenwhen distractors are positioned outside the main attentional focus. We investigated whether suchinterference is due to an attention capture by the distractors. Participants responded to a targetcolour while ignoring word distractors positioned within (Experiment 1) or outside (Experiments 2and 3) the attentional focus. The words carried task-relevant information in their colour and personallysignificant information in their content. Because personally significant information affects performanceonly when positioned in an attended region, it was used as a marker for the locus of the attentional focus.As expected, when distractors were attended, both task-relevant and personally significant informationaffected performance. However, when distractors were unattended, only task-relevant informationcaused interference, suggesting that attention did not shift to the distractors' location. We discusspossible accounts for interference effects in focused-attention tasks.