Learning to ignore visual onset distractors hinges on a configuration-dependent coordinates system

Decrement of attentional capture elicited by visual onset distractors, consistent with habituation, has been extensively characterized over the past several years. However, the type of spatial frame of reference according to which such decrement occurs in the brain remains unknown. Here, four related experiments are reported to shed light on this issue. Observers were asked to discriminate the orientation of a titled line while ignoring a salient but task-irrelevant visual onset that occurred on some trials. The experiments all involved an initial habituation phase, during which capture elicited by the onset distractor progressively decreased, as in prior studies. Importantly, in all experiments, the location of the target and the distractor remained fixed during this phase. After habituation was established, in a final test phase of the various experiments, the spatial arrangement of the target and the distractor was changed to test for the relative contribution to habituation of retinotopic, spatiotopic, and configuration-dependent visual representations. Experiment 1 indicated that spatiotopic representations contribute little, if at all, to the observed decrement in attentional capture. The results from Experiment 2 were compatible with the notion that such capture reduction occurs in either retinotopic- or configuration-specific representations. However, Experiment 3 ruled out the contribution of retinotopic representations, leaving configuration-specific representation as the sole viable interpretation. This conclusion was confirmed by the results of Experiments 4 and 5. In conclusion, visual onset distractors appear to be rejected at a level of the visual hierarchy where visual events are encoded in a configuration-specific or context-dependent manner. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved) Impact Statement Past research has established that salient stimuli automatically attract our attention. However, an efficient interaction with the surrounding environment, potentially presenting several salient stimuli, requires the brain to have the ability to learn to ignore visual distractions. Previous studies on habituation to visual onsets, namely to stimuli that strongly capture attention because they abruptly appear in the visual field, has confirmed this key adaptive function of our cognitive system. However, since the brain uses different types of coordinate systems to represent the visual input, it remains to be established on which type of frame of reference the distractor-filtering mechanisms operate. Here, in four experiments, we addressed this key issue and found that habituation to onset distractors does not take place in retinal or spatiotopic coordinates but instead that habituation occurs in a visual representation where the distractor is coded with respect to the spatial context in which it appears. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)