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. 2009 Aug;16(4):648-53.
doi: 10.3758/PBR.16.4.648.

Goal-driven attentional capture by invisible colors: evidence from event-related potentials

Ulrich Ansorge  1 , Monika Kiss, Martin Eimer
Affiliations

Goal-driven attentional capture by invisible colors: evidence from event-related potentials

Ulrich Ansorge et al. Psychon Bull Rev. 2009 Aug.

Abstract

We combined event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and behavioral measures to test whether subliminal visual stimuli can capture attention in a goal-dependent manner. Participants searched for visual targets defined by a specific color. Search displays served as metacontrast masks for preceding cue displays that contained one cue in the target color. Although this target-color cue was spatially uninformative, it produced behavioral spatial cuing effects and triggered an ERP correlate of attentional selection (i.e., the N2pc component). These results demonstrate that target-color cues captured attention, in spite of the fact that cue localization performance assessed in separate blocks was at chance level. We conclude that task-set contingent attentional capture is not restricted to supraliminal stimuli, but is also elicited by visual events that are not consciously perceived.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Example of a cue display (left side), a target-present display (top right), and a target-absent display (bottom right). Stimuli are not drawn to scale.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Top panel: ERPs elicited at electrode sites PO7/8 contralateral (dashed lines) and ipsilateral (solid lines) to the target-colour cue in the search task (shown separately for target-present and target-absent trials), and in the cue localization task (collapsed across target-present and target-absent trials). Bottom panel: Scalp distribution maps obtained during the N2pc time window (200-260 ms after cue onset). Maps represent differences between brain activity over ipsi- and contralateral hemispheres, constructed by spherical spline interpolation (Perrin, Pernier, Bertrand, & Echallier, 1989) after mirroring difference amplitudes to obtain symmetrical but inverse amplitude values for both hemispheres.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Top left: ERPs at PO7/8 contralateral (dashed lines) and ipsilateral (solid lines) to the side of the target in the search task, collapsed across all target-colour cue locations. Bottom left: Scalp distribution maps for the target N2pc (250-310 ms after cue onset). Top right: Difference waves obtained by subtracting ipsilateral from contralateral ERPs, showing the target N2pc, and cue-induced N2pcs on target-present and target-absent trials.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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