Mizon, Guy; (2002) Selective attention and inhibition : Effects of inhibition tasks on subsequent distractor rejection. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Recent work has shown that the extent to which irrelevant distractors are perceived is determined by the level of perceptual load in relevant processing. While high perceptual load typically reduces distractor perception, low perceptual load typically results in perception of irrelevant distractors (see Lavie, 2001 for review). Thus in situations of low perceptual load, response tendencies toward the perceived yet irrelevant distractors must be prevented from leading to unwanted responses. This thesis provides a new line of behavioural evidence for the suggestion that selective attention involves inhibition of response tendencies to perceived distractors in situations of low perceptual load. Specifically, the present studies examined whether engaging response inhibition in one task would lead to greater response competition effects from irrelevant distractors on responses in a subsequent flanker task. We designed a new paradigm in which a flanker task was preceded by a response inhibition task on each trial. Response inhibition was manipulated either by varying the demand to make a response or to stop it (using a stop signal task - Chapter 2); or by varying the spatial congruency of the mapping between stimuli and responses (Chapter 3); or by varying the congruency between relevant and irrelevant dimensions in a Stroop colour word task (Chapter 4). The results suggest that the engagement of inhibition in the first task of each trial reduces the efficiency with which response tendencies to distractors were suppressed in the following flanker task. Carry-over effects of inhibition were dissociated from the effects of the general difficulty of Task 1; were found to persist across an interval of several seconds between the first and second tasks; and were also found to occur only in situations of low perceptual load. These findings thus provide new support for the suggestion that active inhibition is involved in selective attention.

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