title: Learning to ignore: acquisition of sustained attentional suppression.
abstract: We examined whether the selection mechanisms committed to the suppression of ignored stimuli can be modified by experience to produce a sustained, rather than transient, change in behavior. Subjects repeatedly ignored the shape of stimuli, while attending to their color. On subsequent attention to shape, there was a robust and sustained decrement in performance that was selective to when shape was ignored across multiple-color-target contexts, relative to a single-color-target context. Thus, amount of time ignored was not sufficient to induce a sustained performance decrement. Moreover, in this group, individual differences in initial color target selection were associated with the subsequent performance decrement when attending to previously ignored stimuli. Accompanying this sustained decrement in performance was a transfer in the locus of suppression from an exemplar (e.g., a circle) to a feature (i.e., shape) level of representation. These data suggest that learning can influence attentional selection by sustained attentional suppression of ignored stimuli.
authors.affiliation: University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Matthew L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Dixon
authors.forename: Justin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ruppel
authors.forename: Jay
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pratt
authors.forename: Eve
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: De Rosa
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D005795:Generalization, Stimulus; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011930:Reaction Time; D012193:Reversal Learning; D014163:Transfer, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult