Attention on autopilot: Past experience and attentional set

Abstract

What factors determine the implementation of attentional set? It is often assumed that set is determined only by experimenter instructions and characteristics of the immediate stimulus environment, yet it is likely that other factors play a role. The present experiments were designed to evaluate the latter possibility; specifically, the role of past experience was probed. In a 320-trial training phase, observers could use one of two possible attentional sets (but not both) to find colour-defined targets in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream of letters. In the subsequent 320-trial test phase, where either set could be used, observers persisted in using their pre-established sets through the remainder of the experiment, affirming a clear role of past experience in the implementation of attentional set. A second experiment revealed that sufficient experience with a given set was necessary to facilitate persistence with it. These results are consistent with models of executive control (e.g., Norman & Shallice, 1986), in which “top-down” behaviours are influenced by learned associations between tasks and the environment.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by a grant from the FAA (2001-G-020). We thank Chip Folk, Roger Remington, Steve Yantis, and an anonymous reviewer for thoughtful comments and suggestions on previous versions of this paper. Additionally, we thank James Drakakis, Sarah James, and Lindsay Vodoklys for assistance with data collection.

Notes

¹The reader is reminded that “same” and “different” singleton conditions should be interpreted in the proper context, for the singleton group, during the training phase; the “different” singleton distractor never matched the colour of the target, but the “same” singleton distractor matched the actual target colour 20% of the time, as the target could be one of five colours.

²We acknowledge a limitation in drawing strong conclusions favouring our automaticity account from the results of Experiment 2 alone, as alternative explanations could account for our data. For example, an observer's subjective assessment of the costs of switching to a new set could increase as a function of experience with the old set.

³While we view priming as a phenomenon that is distinct from attentional set, we do not think that one has to reject the possibility that it operates in a top-down manner. Granted, priming may not be determined by expectancy, but it is not clear that this should be taken as a defining characteristic of a top-down process.