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Luck et al. (2021) reviewed evidence that observers can learn to suppress attentional capture by salient distractors. Several commentaries were written in response to this review paper, many of which raised important and interesting issues. Here, we respond to these commentaries. Although there has been substantial progress in the attentional capture debate, there are still remaining issues that need to be addressed before the debate is completely resolved. Specifically, we summarize the need for an independent measure of bottom-up salience and better metrics of how attentional control unfolds over time. Ultimately, the field may need a more refined theoretical model of visual attention that distinguishes between attentional priority, attentional orienting, and attentional engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over 25 years, researchers have debated whether physically salient stimuli capture attention in an automatic manner, independent of the observer's goals, or whether the capture of attention depends on the match between a stimulus and the observer's task set. Recent evidence suggests an intermediate position in which salient stimuli automatically produce a priority signal, but the capture of attention can be prevented via an inhibitory mechanism that suppresses the salient stimulus. Here, proponents from multiple sides of the debate describe how their original views have changed in light of recent research, as well as remaining areas of disagreement. These perspectives highlight some emerging areas of consensus and provide new directions for future research on attentional capture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have demonstrated that salient distractors can be proactively inhibited to prevent attentional capture. Traditional theories frame attentional guidance effects such as this in terms of explicit goals. However, several researchers have recently argued that that unconscious factors – such as the features of attended and ignored items on previous trials (called selection history) – play a stronger role in guiding attention and can overpower explicit goals. The current study assessed whether voluntary inhibition can overpower selection history. We directly compared both forms of top-down control by measuring overt eye movements, which offer an unambiguous measure of which location has won the competition for attention. We repeatedly found that selection history overpowered any effects of voluntary goals, such that observers were unable to avoid fixating a salient distractor of a known color if the target had been presented in that color on the previous trial. Moreover, a salient distractor of a particular color captured gaze even when the observer had voluntarily chosen this color to be the distractor color just moments before. Taken together, these experiments suggest that the ability to inhibit a salient color singleton is primarily a result of recent experience and not a result of explicit goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have indicated that abrupt onsets have the power to capture attention against our will. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that abrupt onsets can be suppressed, but only when there is a strong incentive to do so. We presented a highly-salient flurry of distracting, irrelevant abrupt onsets immediately prior to each target display. This should incentivize participants to suppress the disruptive onsets (if that is an available strategy) and/or habituate to the abrupt onsets. In Experiment 1, the flurry of onsets was composed of dots. Experiment 2 greatly increased the size of the flashing onsets (10-fold increase in pixels) to make them even more salient and worthy of suppression. Experiment 3 used premasks, so that the search items would be offsets rather than onsets. Experiment 4 created more direct competition between the salient onsets and the search display. Surprisingly, despite the variety of approaches employed specifically to promote suppression of capture by abrupt onsets, we were unable to eliminate, or even noticeably reduce, capture effects. The present data support the hypothesis that the visual system is incapable of suppressing abrupt onsets in diffusely attended regions of visual space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although mindfulness, or the self-regulation of attention, has been found beneficial in reducing teacher stress and burnout and in increasing students’ cognitive and emotional regulatory skills, no study has explored students’ attitudes toward meditation practices in depth. This mixed-methods study reports results from a randomized, controlled trial of a 10-week mindfulness intervention in a public school setting with 28 4th-grade students from lower income and ethnic minority backgrounds. Over the course of the intervention, students were asked to respond to writing and drawing prompts about their feelings and attitudes toward mindfulness. At the end of the intervention, the experimental teacher rated students on how often they had practiced mindfulness breathing during class. Qualitative analysis of journal entries yielded personality traits of students who were receptive or resistant to mindfulness training. Practical strategies for identifying and remediating resistant students and for implementing mindfulness interventions in a school setting are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Highlights from the article: But more recent research suggests that observers learn to reject these salient distractors (e.g., Vatterott & Vecera, [12]) and selectively inhibit those salient items in order to prevent attention capture (called the I signal suppression hypothesis i ; for a review, see Gaspelin & Luck, 2018). Other articles focus on inhibition of nonsalient distractors during visual search (Carlisle & Nitka, 2019; Conci, Deichsel, Müller, & Tölner, 2019; Stilwell & Vecera, 2019; Van Moorselaar, Theeuwes, & Olivers, 2019). This likely highlights an ongoing debate in the field about whether attention is guided by explicit goals (i.e., conscious foreknowledge of the upcoming visual scene) or whether attention is guided by implicit learning processes (e.g., automatic priming from the previous trial).