Item-specific control of attention capture: An eye movement study

Measures of attentional capture are sensitive to attentional control settings. Recent research suggests that such control settings can be linked associatively to specific items. Rapid item-specific retrieval of these control settings can then modulate measures of attentional capture. However, the processes that produce this item-specific control of attentional capture are unclear. The current study addressed this issue by examining eye-movement patterns associated with the item-specific proportion congruency effect (ISPC). Participants searched for a shape singleton target in search displays that also contained a colour singleton-the colour singleton was either the same item as the shape singleton (congruent trials) or a different item (incongruent trials). The relative proportions of congruent and incongruent trials were manipulated separately for two distinct item types that were randomly intermixed. Response times (RTs) were faster on congruent than incongruent trials, and this congruency effect was larger for high-proportion congruent (HPC) than low-proportion congruent (LPC) items. Eye movement data revealed a higher proportion of saccades towards the distractor and longer dwell times on the distractor in the HPC condition. These results suggest that item-specific associative learning can influence the strength of representation of the task goal (e.g., find the odd shape), a form of selection history effect in visual search.