EXPRESS: Can location cues facilitate attentional suppression?

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.