Attentional Capture Alters Feature Perception

We live in a dynamic, distracting world. When distracting information captures attention, what are the consequences for perception? Previous literature has focused on effects such as reaction time (RT) slowing, accuracy decrements, and oculomotor capture by distractors. In the current study, we asked whether attentional capture by distractors can also more fundamentally alter target feature representations, and if so, whether participants are aware of such errors. Using a continuous report task and novel confidence range report paradigm, we discovered 2 types of feature-binding errors when a distractor was presented along with the target: First, when attention is strongly captured by the distractor, participants commit swapping errors (misreporting the color at the distractor location instead of the target color), which remarkably seem to occur without awareness. Second, when participants successfully resist capture, they tend to exhibit repulsion (perceptual distortion away from the color at the distractor location). Thus, we found that capture not only induces a spatial shift of attention, it also alters feature perception in striking ways. Public Significance Statement We live in a dynamic world full of distractions. When spatial attention gets captured by a distractor object, people often respond slower to their target and make more errors. The current study suggests that being captured by a distractor can also change how people perceive a target object. When attention is strongly captured by the distractor, people sometimes misreport the distractor color as the target, and are not even aware of their errors. Even when successfully resisting capture, people tend to report a color distorted by the distractor color.