Poole, D. orcid.org/0000-0002-7399-2499, Grange, J. orcid.org/0000-0002-8352-8390 and Milne, E. orcid.org/0000-0003-0127-0718 (2025) EXPRESS: Can location cues facilitate attentional suppression? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. ISSN: 1747-0218
Abstract
The spatial cueing paradigm has illustrated that location cues result in attentional enhancement of target stimuli. However, evidence is mixed on whether proactive attentional suppression can be cued in a similar way. In this registered report, we used a hybrid flanker-visual search-spatial cueing paradigm in which participants were presented with informative or non-informative cues regarding the upcoming location of a target-feature matching distractor in the search array. We aimed to replicate and extend a previous study which found evidence that cues support attentional suppression (Munneke, Van der Stigchel & Theeuwes, 2008. Acta Psychologia, 129 (1): 101 - 107). We repeated the experiment with informative and non-informative cue conditions blocked (Experiment 2) and with possible target and distractor locations separated (Experiment 3). Across all three experiments (total n = 554) we did not observe any evidence of cueing enhanced attentional suppression. In Experiment 1 and Experiment 3, participant responses were slightly slower in the informative cue condition, suggesting that the cue itself captured attention when cue-type was interleaved and thus unpredictable trial-to-trial. Surprisingly, post experiment assessment of distractor learning suggested participants had not learnt the association between cue and distractor location in any experiment. These findings do not support spatial cue enhanced attentional suppression.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 The Authors. Except as otherwise noted, this author-accepted version of a journal article published in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology is made available via the University of Sheffield Research Publications and Copyright Policy under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | Attention; Suppression; Cueing; Expectation; Distractor |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Psychology (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Economic and Social Research Council ES/V002538/1 ECONOMIC & SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL ES/V002538/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 23 Jul 2025 09:38 |
Last Modified: | 23 Jul 2025 11:31 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/17470218251357942 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:229570 |
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