TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2014//
TI  - Evaluative pressure overcomes perceptual load effects
JO  - Psychonomic bulletin and review
A1  - Normand, Alice
A1  - Autin, Frédérique
A1  - Croizet, Jean-Claude
SP  - 737
EP  - 742
VL  - 22
IS  - 3
N2  - Perceptual load has been found to be a powerful bottom-up determinant of distractibility, with high perceptual load preventing distraction by any irrelevant information. However, when under evaluative pressure, individuals exert top-down attentional control by giving greater weight to task-relevant features, making them more distractible from task-relevant distractors. One study tested whether the top-down modulation of attention under evaluative pressure overcomes the beneficial bottom-up effect of high perceptual load on distraction. Using a response-competition task, we replicated previous findings that high levels of perceptual load suppress task-relevant distractor response interference, but only for participants in a control condition. Participants under evaluative pressure (i.e., who believed their intelligence was assessed) showed interference from task-relevant distractor at all levels of perceptual load. This research challenges the assumptions of the perceptual load theory and sheds light on a neglected determinant of distractibility: the self-relevance of the performance situation in which attentional control is solicited.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1069-9384
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0729-8
ID  - ref1
ER  -