Attentional Mechanisms of Distractor Suppression

• Published in: Current directions in psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society Vol. 23; no. 2; pp. 147 - 153
• Main Author: Geng, Joy J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-04-2014; Sage Publications; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Activity levels. Psychomotricity; Attention; Behavior; Behavioral neuroscience; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition; Electrophysiology; Experimental psychology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Perception; Personality traits; Prefrontal cortex; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Saccades; Saliency; Vigilance. Attention. Sleep; Working memory; suppression; attention; inhibition; distracter; rejection; Human; Distractor; Attention; Cognition; Review; Inhibition
• ISSN: 0963-7214; 1467-8721
• DOI: 10.1177/0963721414525780

The ability to suppress distractors is critical for the successful completion of goal-oriented behaviors. This is particularly true for everyday behaviors that take time to accomplish and are frequently interrupted by unpredicted events (e.g., spotting a sale on a favorite drink while searching a grocery store for an apple). For one to continue with the intended goal, attention to the distractor must be reactively suppressed (i.e., terminated) so that the goal-oriented behavior may resume. Such reactive suppression can be contrasted with a proactive mechanism that anticipates the appearance of a distractor and suppresses related sensory processing in advance. In this review, I consider three aspects of distractor suppression: (a) the distinction between proactive and reactive mechanisms, (b) the conditions under which reactive distractor rejection can be rapid, and (c) the neural and cognitive processes necessary for controlling proactive and reactive distractor suppression.