Yue Zhang¹ (), Nicholas Gaspelin¹; ¹University of Missouri

Much research has shown that distraction can be reduced by suppressing salient stimuli to prevent attentional capture. This ability to suppress seems to result, by and large, from implicit learning and this learning develops within a few exposures to a salient stimulus. However, the exact mechanisms underlying learned suppression remain unclear. The current study will explore one potential explanation: Salient stimuli initially capture attention which jumpstarts a suppressive process to prevent future distraction. To study this, we introduce a new color-blocking technique. Participants searched for a target and attempted to ignore a salient distractor. Importantly, we changed the display colors every 5 trials. This allowed us to examine learned suppression that develops quickly (i.e., within a few trials). The results show that salient distractors initially captured attention and were rapidly suppressed within a few trials of exposure. Other experiments explored the causal relationship between initial capture and later suppression. These findings indicate that feature-based suppression is rapidly learned, perhaps taking only a single trial. They also demonstrate that initial capture may be necessary for suppression to develop.