Temporal task demands and attentional capture by rewarded distractors
Résumé
The capacity to focus our attention on task-relevant stimuli is critical to maintain a good level of performance. Nevertheless, irrelevant but visually salient stimuli can easily capture our attention and divert us from the task at hand. Similarly, reward-related stimuli have high attentional priority regardless of their physical salience or task-relevance. It has been proposed that our ability to avoid distraction by salient stimuli could be influenced by the time constraints of the task: we would need to set more stringent attentional filters when temporal demands are high to avoid useless distraction and maintain a satisfying level of performance. Thus, the aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of temporal demands on the distraction produced by reward-associated distractors. The participants performed a visual search task for a black moving target among black static distractors. On some trials, one of those distractors turned into a highly salient colored distractor. In a first study, colored distractors were not associated with reward outcomes whereas they signaled a high or low reward outcome in the second study. In each study, the stimuli were displayed until response for half of the participants (no time pressure), and during 200 ms for the other half (time pressure). Results show that time pressure increases distraction by salient non-reward stimuli, but has no significant effect on distraction produced by salient reward-associated stimuli. Nevertheless, the distraction effect is modulated by the distractor’s value (high or low reward). Our results will be discussed within the scope of the Load Theory (Lavie, 2010).